Why not two 12 volt batteries
Need to replace my 4 6 volt batteries,was thinking why 4 6 volt and not 2 12 volt. Reasons?
Forum Discussion
Daveinet wrote:
The problem is that as the batteries age, one battery may be weaker than the other. This means that battery will discharge the other battery to the lower level, which prematurely decreases your over all capacity as the batteries age.
This is, of course, bull.. What happens is the weaker battery can no longer carry it's share of the load, thus pushing a larger and larger share on the good battery so it runs down faster (But they are both, always at exactly the same state of charge)
Also the self discharge rate may be higher in an older battery running them down faster as well.
This, however, does not damage the newer battery unless it is allowed to run down TOO FAR.
The other reason is something I found out the hard way. I used to have 2-12s in parallel, but one of those batteries shorted out. This put a huge load on the other battery which exploded!
Now that... IS fact.. This is the major danger of paralleling batteries. However that said the O/P already has two 12 volt batteries in parallel.. (Each pair of six volt makes one 12 volt) so he already has that potential.
Always keep a box of baking soda handy for such events.
