I would like to strongly discourage the practice of hooking up
multiple batteries in parallel to charge them. Although the
bucket of water analogy has some degree of validity for healthy
batteries, hooking batteries in parallel can have dangerous
consequences in the presense of a battery with a shorted cell,
or should the batteries be hooked up with the wrong polarity.
The safest path is to use an automatic charger, with a current
limit of 6 amps, individually for each battery to be charged.
Knowing that in spite of my reccommendation some teams
will wire batteries in parallel to charge them (I see this in the
pits every year), please make a custom wiring board with fused
anderson connectors that limit the current to each battery to
6 amps if you plan to do this. This will not cost much
money and will prevent hooking up batteries with the polarity
reversed. It will also provide protection in the event that a cell
shorts in one of the batteries.
Please note: I am not suggestin that you exceed the 6 amp
current limit on the charger, replacing this limt with fuses,
as this would be against the rules...
Eugene
Quote:
Originally Posted by Conor Ryan
- You might want to check out this old thread that I dug up, discussing charging multiple batteries at once (from the same charger)
- There are companies out there that sell chargers that are meant to charge multiple 12 volt lead acid batteries at once, these chargers are for different models than the ones we use, they would still charge the batteries from the kit.
- A company by the name of Schumacher Electric sells multiple battery chargers, others do too, but they were the first I found
- Check the rules from year to year to see if you can use systems like so
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