battery hook up

System

I have six 6 volt batters and not sure of the correct sequence to hook them
up to accept the power from the solar panels. I wired all the + to each other and all -- to each other, at the tail end I hooked up + to the--. that's as good as it gets
the first two I also went + to the -
but when I tried to hook the+ to - on the two remining pair in the middle I get fire works. I was fortunate to find this sit on the web

Cariboocoot

Re: battery hook up

Welcome to the forum.

From the sound of it if all you got were fireworks you were lucky. Your description is one of a dead short across about 1320 Amp hours of 6 Volt battery. That's enough to cause serious damage to them, tools, or you.

The first question is: what is your system Voltage? The choices would be 12, 24, or 48 usually.

With six 6 Volt batteries you could only utilize all of them in a 12 Volt configuration. That would be three strings of two batteries in series. Each string would look like this:

(-) BATTERY (+) ---- (-) BATTERY (+)

From there, all the (-) of each string (on the left) connect to each other. Likewise all the (+) of each string (on the right) connect to each other. From these common (-) and (+) points you would have 12 Volts at 660 Amp hours (depending on the actual rating of the batteries).

The little picture shows two parallel strings of two in series.

Cariboocoot

Re: battery hook up

In response to your e-mail (like to keep the info public so it can benefit others as well):

Another battery wiring reference for you to look at, SmartGauge's battery connecting guide: http://www.smartgauge.co.uk/batt_con.html

It shows single batteries, but think of each series connected pair of 6 Volts as one battery.

For more than two parallel batteries I prefer method #3. All of the connections to the battery (inverter and charge controller as well as any loads) should go to the common connection points for positive and negative. The basic idea is to keep the wire lengths, and thus the resistance, the same for all circuits carrying current in to or out of all batteries.

Sorry I don't know of any specific battery guide I'd recommend. When you've been at it 50 years you tend not to think that way anyhow.

The Battery FAQ's is a good thing to read: http://www.windsun.com/Batteries/Battery_FAQ.htm

The Beginner's thread is long and full of info and links to other info sources: http://forum.solar-electric.com/showthread.php?t=5556

Due to the great contributions from many fine minds, this forum is turning into the definitive reference source for solar electric power information.