6V golf cart batteries

dyuhas

When I combine 2 6V batteries I get 12V.  Do I also get twice the amperage of a single battery?

Photowhit

No, in series (connecting the positive of one to the negative of the other) the amperage remains the same and the voltage increases.

In essence you are just building a bigger battery, a 6 volt battery is really 3 - 2 volt cells hooked up in series, your just making a battery with 6 cells.

softdown

You get twice the power.

BB.

Power = Voltage * Current

You double the voltage = 2x the power
You double the current = 2x the power

You take two batteries in series, you get:

P = 2*Voltage * Current

You take same two batteries in parallel, you get:

P = Voltage * 2*Current

Same amount of power (or energy if you use Amp*Hours instead of Amps for the current).

-Bill

soylentgreen

It's not 100% clear to me what the OP was asking, so I could see two possible answers:

"No":  Two 6V golf cart batteries, each, say with 220 Amp Hours, wired in Series, will give you 220 Amp Hours (at 12V).

"Yes" : Two 6V golf cart batteries will give you a hell of a lot more amp hours than a single 12V battery of similar size (as these  tend to max out at about 100 Amp Hours).

rcmatt007

voltage times watts = amps      by putting your batteries in series, it allows you to put the same amps through the wires but because you doubled the volts, you have doubled  the power

Sixpack99

actually watts / voltage = amps

Johann

And volts times amps = watts

soylentgreen

"voltage times watts = amps"  - nope.     Dimensional analysis to the rescue!

Let's see if I can get this right - it's been a while since I had this in school.

• Volts = Potential Energy/Charge = N*m/C = kg*m2/(A*s3)
• Amps = Charge / Time = 1C/s
• Watts = J/S = N*m/S = (kg*m2)/s3

So, in the example above:

"voltage times watts" = (kg*m2)/(A*s3) * (kg*m2)/s3 = (kg2*m4)/(a*s6)  : not what we want.

Instead if you look at power (watts), does it equal VA?

Watts = (kg*m2)/s3  = VA  ?

Let's look at VA

 VA =  V * A = (kg*m2)/(A*s3)  *  (C/s)
   =  kg*m2*C/(A*s3)

Substituting in that we know 1A = 1C/s we get

   =  kg*m2*(A/S)/(A*s3)

And the A's and one of the S's cancel out, leaving us with

  VA = (kg*m2)/s3

e.g, the definition of Power in Watts.

rcmatt007

Sixpack99 said:

actually watts / voltage = amps

opps, you are right in any case, by doubling the voltage you can double the watts and still have the same amps