[Dave Flowerday]

Mike & Al,
Sorry for continuing to drag this thread off-topic, but I have a comment: it seems like I see batteries in parallel all the time too. Two examples that come to mind are the large banks of batteries used in electric forklifts and extremely large UPSes. In both cases I've seen banks of batteries that are clearly wired in parallel with large metal bars connecting the battery terminals together (and obviously no diodes involved). I think in these situations it is common to see sub-groups of batteries in series, with the sub-groups then tied together in parallel. I'll have to doublecheck but I think there is an example of this setup sitting not more than 20 feet outside our playing field area in the Motorola warehouse from an old UPS.

Does this sound familiar to either of you? If I remember this correctly then it certainly seems that there are situations where batteries can be wired in parallel without diodes efficiently.
Dave