Battery Wiring

[Fred Villiard]

Maine need some advice,

Over the weekend picked up 4 of Sam's 6 volt golf cart batteries, today when I was getting ready to laminate up a battery box for them, found the space was to small for all of them, so I'll have put two of them in a seperate place. I want them as one large bank not two, the wire run between the two will be about 7 feet.

The quandry is do I wire the two batteries that are together in parallel or series, I can talk myself into either way but am leaning towards parallel then series with the long run.

Both groups will be fused with Blue Sea terminal fuses, and the wiring will be 4/0.

Thank You
Fred Villiard

 

[Stu Jackson]

Put the ones that are together in series to get 12V and then wire the two banks together in parallel.

 

[Benny17441]

I agree with Stu, It would easily reconfigure to two independent 12V banks if the need arose. Having two 6V banks separated by 7 ft may not be as practical. 4 6Vs for a Mac 25? Make sure you balance their weight to keep the boat on even keel in the water.

 

[Johnb]

Agree with above. If you ever at some time in the future want to set up a 1-2-both switch, or separate critical (nav lights, VHF, etc) from other (TV, fans etc) having two 12V banks will be advantageous.

 

[centerline]

you may already know this.....
even though you will have them separated by some distance, install the hot lead from the boat system on one set of batts (12V) and the negative from the system on the other set of batts (12V)...... wired parallel to maintain 12 volts
this will insure you get full voltage and amp flow, from and to, the entire bank..... otherwise it really kinda defeats the purpose of installing the high capacity system.

 

[Fred Villiard]

Thank you all.

I am watching the balance that's why I need to go so far apart.

Why I was leaning toward paralleling the close pairs and then seriesing them, was to keep the voltage balance in the batteries.

My thinking if series the the pairs them one pair would have the extra resistance of the 7 foot leads and that could lead to an unbalanced condition. Where as the parallel pairs would have equal resistance in the circuit, I'm still flipping back and forth.

Fred Villiard