Thor Forums

[Chance]

Originally Posted by The_Breeze

I have enough room for 4 12's or 4 6's wired in series then parallel. I guess the winning hand is total amp hours and discharge rate?

Has anyone experimented with this and have an opinion on which performed better and how/why?

I gave a 1kw inverter. When I hook it up, the batt indicator LEDs show 2/3 and it doesn't change - at least for the night. Disconnect the inverter and lights go back to full. Is this normal?

If you’re installing 4 batteries (other than lithium), either flooded or AGM, the practical solution is to go with 6-Volt batteries. And it has little to do with battery differences — that’s missing the point completely.

With 6-Volt batteries you’ll end up with two parallel strings of two batteries in series each. And that’s OK.

With 12-Volt batteries you'd end up with 4 strings of 1 battery each in parallel, and that’s not ideal.


If comparing similar “deep cycle” 12V batteries to their equivalent 6V, it makes very little difference. The problem is usually that 6V deep cycle batteries are compared to 12V that are very different in construction and then somehow the difference is attributed to the voltage. Basically, 6V and 12V can be different, but they don’t have to be.

In your case with 4 batteries, I’d stick with 6V regardless from a practical standpoint. I’d avoid 4 X 12-Volt batteries in parallel (lithium would be an exception).