Strategic Layout for 12v Batteries?

[Jaybird]

Hi there. First post so please excuse any etiquette mistakes.

We have a very small off grid solar system using (all 12v) two deep cycle marine batteries and two great big industrial batteries.

Right now I just have them all lined up in a row with the two smaller ones first & second and the two big ones third and fourth. I have the positive and negative leads from my solar charger on the first small battery and the positive and negative leads to the inverter on the terminals of the last large battery.

Don't ask me why I did it this way, it just seemed to lay out nicely. I'm wondering though if I should be doing it differently (maybe alternating the sizes, putting one positive and one negative lead to the inverter off two different batteries, putting the charge controller leads on two separate batteries etc )

Everything seems to work fine now but any advice would be appreciated.

Thanks,
Jaybird.

[Mike90250]

Mixing batteries of different brands or capacities is not optimal for your future reference. Before doing it again, save up enough money to buy all the batteries at the same time. And check each for defects. A buddy of mine got a battery with no electrolyte in one of the cells, has to take it back and his power is off, till he gets it exchanged.
Connecting the charger and load wires on diagonally opposite terminals is the optimum way to hook parallel batteries up, here's a link to a page explaining that a lot better than I can.

http://www.smartgauge.co.uk/batt_con.html

[Jaybird]

Thanks Mike90250. That's a great article. One thought though. The last couple of sentences very strongly suggests applying the charge leads to the same point as the load leads.

My inverter has two sets of cables (I'm assuming to balance some internal component load) and I have a trickle charger I use to top up my batteries when my generator is running.

So on each of the two diagonal terminals I'll have:
- a battery cable from the adjacent linked battery
- my solar charge controller lead
- two seperate cables to the two sides of the inverter
- a clamp from my trickle charger

Seems a bit messy. Any advice?

Thanks, Jaybird

[Wy_White_Wolf]

Use a busbar. Hook all your connections to it and if your batteries are paralleled then hook all of them to it instead of each other.

WWW

[Mike90250]

If you have to stack terminals. the inverter goes closest to the battery, then the main charge controller, then any trickle charger.

[Jaybird]

Thanks guys.
As far as order of batteries goes, if I'm going to hook up my leads on diagonally opposite terminals it would be easiest if I went small-large-large-small as the "small" batteries are actually good sized deep cycle marine batteries with two top mount posts for each polarity so I'd have an easier time connecting leads.

Any issues with that?