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What are the pitfalls of having a single battery bank in two locations? [music] Watch this video to find out more. Whether you need a remote consultation design or perhaps [music] inviting us aboard your boat, Pacific Yacht Systems is here to help. Check out the links in the description below. Hi everyone, Jeff Cote here from Pacific Yacht Systems with another installment of Tech Talk. We've got a question from a fellow boater, Carlos, uh has a cruiser 370 and he's from Maryland and asks, "I've got a group 27 battery that's often gets depleted after playing music from that battery bank for a period of time. What can I do to safely add a secondary battery, but there's not enough space where the original battery is and I want to install it in a different location. Uh can I do that or how should I do that?" Okay, so basically this is a common problem. Most of us over a period of time will find ourselves with a battery bank that is simply has not enough battery in the physical location where it is and we are tempted to increase that battery bank capacity or to add another battery bank somewhere else and have two battery banks in two different locations so that we can have additional capacity. Going to two different battery banks is probably not advisable. It just becomes a lot more maintenance. So, you would need to have basically uh battery source selector switch. The loads would have to be decided to which battery they come on off. You could maybe have a source selector like an off-one-to-both. You could do that, right? But now that would change your battery switch. So, you could have a port battery, starboard battery, or battery one, battery two, go to through a load switch, and then you could have them in parallel. You could do that, and then all your loads and charging would come out through that switch. The challenge with that is you never want to run the switch to off when charging an alternator because then you're going to lose your alternator. There's whole videos about that. Check in the links in the description below. So, you could have battery one, battery two, or better would be simply one battery together. Now, what are the caveats of putting a battery bank in two separate locations? The issue is that if you've got a high output charger that is temperature compensated, which means you have got a little sort of like sensor that measures the battery temperature, if you put that temperature sensor in one place, you can't have that temperature sensor in another place. So, with large battery banks that are charged quickly, you can't measure thermal runaway into two different locations. And if the battery banks are not all physically together, if one of them ever gets really hot and you want to reduce your charging, the temperature sensor that is put on another battery is not going to be able to measure that. So, that is one of the caveats of having battery banks in separate locations is that under high output chargers, either alternators or uh inverter chargers or like high output chargers, where do you put that single temperature sensor? So, that's one consideration. The other one, too, is if you put your batteries in parallel, uh you need to make sure the cabling is well. Of course, the venting is required on both. And it's not ideal. Like, ideally, when we come on board a boat and someone wants to increase the battery bank capacity, I've put multiple battery banks into separate locations rarely. What I would normally do is I would find a new location to have both batteries be there. And we rarely, rarely, but it does happen, find ourselves putting one battery bank in two physical locations. It can happen. Like I said, uh Carlos could consider doing an right? So, have two separate battery banks connected to a battery switch and on a source selector, either them have them on parallel or have them go to battery one or battery two as a way to increase his battery bank capacity. There's always never an easy answer with uh doing electrical work. You generally have to find the compromise solution that's going to give you the most bang for the buck. I would like to recap that I would ideally want the battery bank to be together. So, find a new location for both batteries to be in one place. In the absence of that, then I would probably consider either an off-one-two-both switch, so have two battery banks going to one switch where you can isolate and separate. But know that also, if all your loads and charging are on one side of the battery bank, and the other one is connected far away, the one that's further away, they're not going to discharge evenly. The one that's connected to the loads is probably going to be have a shorter life. Now, in in this situation, there's only two batteries, but if you had four and four, and you have four batteries that fail prematurely, and the other four are still good, when it's time to change them, you're going to have to change all of them. So, like the cost of having uneven wear, it'd be like with cars, having uneven wear on your tires, means that you're going to end up, you don't change one tire, you change them all. So, that's also the argument for why you want your battery banks to be together. You want them to all experience the same life, so that no single battery fails prematurely, and then you're forced to replace the whole bank. Boating and ideals are rarely in a in agreement. So, sometimes we have to make compromise situations or solutions to get what we want. Thank you for watching. If you're new to the channel and haven't subscribed, we'd appreciate it. And if you're curious about and want to have us, Pacific Yacht Systems, in your court, and you'd like to have us help you decide what's good for your boat, reach out to our consultation and design services. The link is in the description below. And if you happen to be in the Pacific Northwest and like to have us aboard your [music] boat, you can also bring us aboard by uh checking in the links below. Thanks for watching. Uh safe boating, [music] and see you on the water. Take care. Hey fellow boaters, we're going to be doing a lot more tech talk videos. If you've got any suggestions for future videos, leave them in the comments below. Once again, thank you for watching.