jdege
New Member
- Joined
- Dec 16, 2020
- Messages
- 171
The standard advice when wiring batteries into a parallel bank is that the cables all have the same lengths.
But is this in total, or on each side?
Suppose I have four batteries that I'm wiring in parallel. I have a positive bus bar and a negative bus bar. I have a cable running from the positive terminal of each battery to the positive bus bar, a cable from each negative terminal to the negative bus bar, and I attach my loads to these bus bars.
The recommendation is that all of the cables connecting terminal to the bars be the same lengths, but that clearly overgeneralizes things. If, for example, all of the positive cables were one foot long and all of the negative cables were two feet long, there'd still be equal voltage drop across all batteries.
But suppose the differences weren't the same for each polarity? Suppose I had two batteries with 1' positive cables and 2' negative, and two batteries with 2' positive and 1' negative. Every battery had 3' of cable in total, but some had a longer one the positive and some on the negative. From what I can see this would still result in the same voltage drop for each battery, and thus equal loads.
Given the physical layout of my battery installation, I'd have a cleaner install, were I to do this sort of asymmetrical installation.
Am I misunderstanding anything?
But is this in total, or on each side?
Suppose I have four batteries that I'm wiring in parallel. I have a positive bus bar and a negative bus bar. I have a cable running from the positive terminal of each battery to the positive bus bar, a cable from each negative terminal to the negative bus bar, and I attach my loads to these bus bars.
The recommendation is that all of the cables connecting terminal to the bars be the same lengths, but that clearly overgeneralizes things. If, for example, all of the positive cables were one foot long and all of the negative cables were two feet long, there'd still be equal voltage drop across all batteries.
But suppose the differences weren't the same for each polarity? Suppose I had two batteries with 1' positive cables and 2' negative, and two batteries with 2' positive and 1' negative. Every battery had 3' of cable in total, but some had a longer one the positive and some on the negative. From what I can see this would still result in the same voltage drop for each battery, and thus equal loads.
Given the physical layout of my battery installation, I'd have a cleaner install, were I to do this sort of asymmetrical installation.
Am I misunderstanding anything?