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Old 10-06-2019, 01:09 PM   #1
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Terminal blocks to wire in parallel?

Ok so we are moving and expanding our battery bank currently I have it wired for perfectly balanced charging to extend the batteries life as much as possible However once we move and expand it that is going to become a lot more difficult and I had a thought what if I wired all the batteries to terminal blocks then wired the terminal blocks into the electrical system? I'm not 100% sure if this is a viable option and was wondering if anyone used this method.

A big advantage I see to it is the ability to add and remove batteries at will without doing any wiring adjustments. However like I said I am unsure whether this method will actually function correctly so if anyone currently does this or has in the past I'd appreciate the input on it
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Old 10-06-2019, 01:47 PM   #2
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I used that method on my 8, 6 volt battery bank on my boat.

Used bus bars like this.Click image for larger version

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I also used 2, A/B battery switchs on the positive side. With that, I could de-select any series pair of batteries with the turn of a switch.
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Old 10-06-2019, 01:55 PM   #3
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If my understanding is correct, I see two issues that outweigh the pluses.


1) loss of backup power, if coach won't staret due to low chasis batteries (no bootstrap).


2) every battery has unique charge/discharge profiles which is why some inverters offer a 'rebalancing' system.


My RV electrical 'wizard, installed a low-power consuming, solid state marine charger controller, set up to charge the coach array, after the chassis array was fully charged (my guided decision). No loss of 'bootstrap'.
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Old 10-06-2019, 04:05 PM   #4
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Not worried about a backup for the chassis the chassis battery is 2 months old with a dedicated solar maintainer and is jumpable easily from my truck my concern is balanced charging and discharging of the batteries the bank is made up of identical batteries same model brand etc but wiring 8 to 10 for truly balanced charging is gonna be a headache you cant just wire them in a line if you do the ones one either end will draw more than those in the center not by much but by enough it takes quite a bit of wire criss crossing to build a 100% balanced system and I am trying to avoid that headache if possible lol
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Old 10-06-2019, 05:54 PM   #5
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You can avoid the headache by not worrying about even length cables.

As long as the cables are sized properly, this balancing thing is a non issue.

You may get a bit of unbalancing under extreme loads, but then the batteries will balance out, being wired in parallel. They are all connected together, they have no choice but to equalise.

Using the batteries will wear them out long before a few different cable lengths will.

Go to " Yandina.com " and look around for their battery combiner FAQ section.

They explain it in detail.
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Old 10-06-2019, 06:45 PM   #6
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We used the Lynx busbar system from Victron for parallel connections, where we wired 2 batteries and 2 inverters and 2 mppt solar controllers all in parallel with it.
Each connection can be fused individually and they offer an inline catastrophic fuse and shunt able to be monitored from their display panel.

Here is the system in progress of being wired up, with fusing in place.





Here is the completed installation.




To keep components in parallel, just make sure that all of your lengths are equal.
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Old 10-10-2019, 10:47 AM   #7
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Natebert, very nice work.
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Old 10-11-2019, 02:33 PM   #8
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I used a pair of 650 amp DC bus bars. I used 2 foot long 2/0 wires from each of my 100 amp-hour Battle Born Batteries to the bus bars. I used 4/0 wire from the bus bars to the BMV-712 shunt and 650 amp DC disconnect switch. I used additional 4/0 wires from the shunt and disconnect to a 2nd set up bus bars. I connected my Spartan 2200 watt PSW inverter to the same post on those bus bars. The rest of the bus bar posts were used to connect lower amperage systems such as multiple solar MPPT controllers, trailer house power, etc...

I sized my system to handle the inverters surge capability of 6600 watts. Thats about 550 DC amps at 12 volts. The system can handle running my air conditioner using the 1405 watts of solar as long as the sun is shining. The batteries can handle the air conditioner locked rotor amps startup surge without any problem.

I replaced my 13.5K unit with a Coleman-Mach 11K Power Saver unit to reduce the energy draw enough to run all day on solar.
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Old 10-12-2019, 01:06 PM   #9
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x2 on the nice work Natebert. It's even color coordinated blue.
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