Say your 2 strings have 3 feet of cables at 4 awg and 30 amps per string):Īnd then the 15 foot (one way run) with heavier cable: With more detail, perhaps we can come up with a balanced resistance solution. The added resistance of the longer wire run just kills that. In general, because the one set 15 feet away-You will not have perfect sharing. I would suggest you "worry" if two strings are at 10 amps charging/load and one string is OVER 20 amps. Any immediate current reading may show less than perfect current sharing. Or #2 or #3 and if you use 6 volt batteries, you can clamp on the jumper between the two batteries in the common string. Smart Gauge #3 is nice (three/six parallel connections back to master bus bar). Set up your battery banks so you can monitor each string's charging/discharging current easily: ($60 from sears, good enough for our needs) Monitoring/logging battery voltage over time and conditions (discharging, charging, resting, etc.) and you can get a good idea how everything is working.Īlso, get an AC/DC Current Clamp DMM ( DC specifically, there are lots of AC current clamp meters, and they are cheaper-AC&DC are a bit more expensive, but work with your DC power system). If you find something bad (like 6.0 volt and 7.0 volts) you know immediately if something is wrong. This lets you monitor the health of each battery (i.e., 6.5 volts + 6.5 volts = 13.0 volts - Both batteries are "balanced"). The idea is you would only have 3 parallel strings (better than 6, in my humble opinion) and now you can do a quick voltage sanity check across each 6 volt (or other 2/4 volt cell/) battery. Instead of (for example) 6x 12 volt 100 AH batteries (guess on size), if you can find 6x 6 volt 200 AH batteries (i.e., "golf cart size")-Or other cell types/configurations (there are 2 volt and sometimes 4 volt cells available in larger AH ratings). Ok so knowing this might not be the best, what happens? why isn't it done this way?Ī suggestion-Makes for easier debugging (you have what you have-It can work OK, you just have to keep on top of the maintenance and monitoring). It's about 15' between the forward 2 batteries and the rest of the bank. I has come to my attention that wired like this might not be the best way to do this, I'm not sure I can change a lot. The solar comes in on the same output terminals on those batteries. They are wired in parallel first battery has the positive output going to the switch then both the positive and negative go to the next battery and so on till the last battery where the negative of that battery goes to the fuse panel negative buss bar. The other set of batteries are aft thru just an on/off switch. The batteries and in two different spots on the boat, (space is always a problem on a boat) So 2 batteries are forward and they also are on a A/B/Both switch the output of that switch goes to midship to the fuse panel. This is going to be hard to explain how they are wired but try to follow along.lol I have 6 agm batteries wired in parallel. I have a sailboat and am going to be away from land or at least the ability to buy things for long periods of time. Wanted to start a new thread so this information is easy to find for the next guy that needs help!!!
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