Battery bank question?

nobody928

I was wondering the proper way to hook a charge controller in to a battery bank wired in "parallel" consisting of 3x 12volt batteries.

I have seen battery charts showing that inverters should be hooked up to the first batterry and the last battery in the bank to complete the circuit. Do you also install the charge controller wires the same way??

IE: negative cable to the front of the first battery, positive to the last battery in the bank of batteries?

Cariboocoot

Re: Battery bank question?

Whoops. I think you mean "wired in parallel"; three 12 Volt batteries in series gives you 36 Volts.

Here's the standard for battery wiring @ Smart Gauge: http://www.smartgauge.co.uk/batt_con.html

Although the diagrams show four batteries it's pretty much the same with three. You are talking about method #2. In my experience this "diagonal wiring" works best with only two parallel batteries. When you got to three method #3 is better. The important thing is that the wire length, and thus resistance, through each of the parallel current paths (battery strings) is the same.

All connections to other circuits (inverter, charge controller) are made at the same two points.