How to wire up your battery bank

I will give a description followed by a couple of illustrations that should make it pretty easy to understand how you wire up batteries to get the voltage you want.

Parallel Wiring.
Wiring batteries in parallel is hooking all the positive lugs together and all the negative lugs together.  It does not change the overall voltage of the battery bank, it adds amperage and storage of amperage.

Series Wiring.
Wiring batteries in series is hooking the positive of the first battery to the negative of the next battery.  It adds the voltage value of the second battery to the first one. Meaning two 6 volt batteries wired in series would equal 12 volts. 

If you are using several batteries to make up your battery bank you will have both parallel and series wiring in your bank

See the drawings below to get a better understanding..

The drawing below show four 12 Volt batteries wired as a 12 Volt bank.
Parallel Wiring

The drawing below show two 6 Volt batteries wired as a 12 Volt bank.

 

The drawing below show four 6 Volt batteries wired as a 12 Volt bank.

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