![]() So simply by moving one connection we have evened out the volt drop to both batteries. and Battery B has 0.5 volt drop to earth and no volt drop to the output. When we start our engine now, Battery A has no volt drop to earth and 0.5 volts to the output…. just connect them slightly differently!īy taking the electrical feed from the second battery we now even up ‘the pack’ electrically. Well, this isn’t going to cost you much…. So now we are in a situation where Battery A is doing more work and Battery B is not getting charged properly. but Battery A gets the full charging voltage – 14.0 volts for example but Battery B only gets 13.0 volts, so not really enough. We will still have the voltage drop – although it will be smaller as the charging current is a lot less than the cranking current for starting your engine, lets call it 1/4 volt (0.25 volts) on each cable, so now the engine is running and the batteries are charging . But remember what I said earlier, you should always use batteries from the same manufacturer with the same rating and manufacture date… well that still applies and now you will be replacing Battery B that is probably still working OK. Now over a period of time, Battery A will always be ‘used’ slightly more than Battery B so at some point Battery A will have cycled more and be ‘aging’ faster than Battery B and it will eventually lead to problems and will need replacing. ![]() So Battery A will always supply more power than Battery B as battery B’s apparent voltage is always less than Battery A because of the volt drop. Now when we put the whole system on load… starting the engine for instance, there will be a slight voltage drop across the two cables linking the two batteries together… lets say it’s 0.5 volts on each link or bridge cable, that’s one volt in total. Hang on though lets have a closer look.īattery A is the primary battery and Battery B is our newly installed secondary battery. So now we have two new identical batteries how do we go about connecting the two batteries together? Well the most obvious is to simply connect a new battery to the original battery using some cable and new battery terminal clamps like this…. Connecting batteries with different Ah ratings or from different manufactures is not a good idea as it can/will lead to one battery trying to charge the other (due to the internal forward and reverse resistance being different) and can lead to all sorts of other problems. Same make, Amp hour (Ah) rating and if you can the same manufacture date. One thing to remember, if you are going to install a second battery, you are going to have to start with two new, identical batteries. Most people who want to connect two batteries together are trying to expand the battery capacity of their existing setup. ![]() So here is a quick “How To” guide with some explanations on the right way and the wrong way. Like most things there is a right way and a wrong way of doing it and one that I receive emails about is how to connect two batteries in parallel and get even more people finding the site by asking the question on Google. How To:Connect two batteries in parallel – Part 2 answers the questions asked the most. Since this article was published I have received a lot of questions about connecting batteries.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |