Silly thought about wiring batteries-gctid398005

[Guest]

I have noticed multiple diagrams showing how batteries can be attached in either series or parallel, depeneding upon the specific situation.

The diagrams for attaching a load to a set of batteries in series makes sense. For batteries 1 through n, connect negative to positive. When attaching the load, connect positive to battery 1, then negative to battery n. Makes perfect sense.

I'm just wondering why every diagram showing batteries in parallel still depict terminating the positive to battery 1 and the negative to battery n.

If the batteries are all attached correctly in parallel, thus positive to positive, and negative to negative, then why still depict the connections must straddle the first and last battery?

Is this just a "good practice" so that it gets you to do the connections this way everytime so that if you are connecting in series, you follow the same procedure?

[JimMc]

The thought with wiring negative to one end of parallel batteries and positive to the other end has to do with balancing current flow paths.

If you connected positive and negative to the first battery of a set of say 4 parallel batteries then the 4th batteries current would have to go thru a total of 6 jumpers.

By wiring negative to one end of 4 parallel batteries and positive to the other end the current flow of each battery flows thru 3 jumpers.

[Guest]

Thanks for the explanation - that makes perfectly good sense.

[2850Bounty]

Jim explains it perfectly!

The same applies to multiple 6 volt (in series) where groups are cabled in parallel.