Battery strings [RE-wrenches]

[Todd Cory, Mt. Shasta Energy Services]

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The theory sounds good, but I wonder if anyone has done this and found 
empirical data to substantiate the benefits of this practice. If we are 
finding battery failures from dissimilar paralleled strings in the 
field, this technique could possibly solve the problem. I can't think of 
any downside other than more wire being used.

Todd


David Palumbo, Independent Power & Light wrote:

>Todd,
>
>Richard Perez in his "The Complete Battery Book", Tab Books 1985. Chapter
>7 - Using Batteries Effectively, discusses Cross-Wiring the Battery Pack
>"Helps to distribute the loads evenly throughout the entire battery pack.
>This is desirable to minimize small differences between the separate cells
>which make up the battery. Cross-wiring electrically puts parallel paths
>through the battery pack to help maintain a more even state of charge
>throughout the sub-batteries making up the pack." He goes on to say that you
>should use the same size wire as your other connections and explain how it
>works. Abridged version - the parallel interconnecting wire(s) between the
>series strings can prevent total shutdown of the entire string. It provides
>an alternative parallel path for the electricity, it bypasses the weak
>sub-battery and therefore is not limited by it. The sub-batteries can be
>parallel cross-wired only at common voltage levels. Richard recommended this
>cross-wiring for series strings of four or more. In the late 80's I did a
>version of this taught to me by Rob Wills (RE pioneer here in New England).
>The only difference from what Richard describes was that we used a smaller
>gauge wiring to cross-wire - Rob said that there would not be much current
>on this path (he used #10). In practice it looks like this: Connect the
>series connected points of each series string with the series connected
>point (of the same voltage) of the next series string and so on. I fell out
>of the habit of doing this wiring when I began to use large 2 volt cells,
>and also, never parallel more than three series strings.
>
>David
>
>  
>
*
*


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