March 2017 – Rough Fish Registry

On this episode of Rough Fish Registry we talk about BATTERIES! There is a lot of information on this episode about Batteries, and a little bit about chargers, wiring, and converters!

There are a couple things we highlighted in the podcast that we said we’d reference on the blog so you will find those below.

Series VS Parallel

Series is when you hook multiple batteries up Positive to Negative to increase voltage. While you increase voltage Amperage stays the same. For instance a 36V trolling uses three batteries if they were 100Ah each when you hook them up in Series you’d have 36V @ 100ah
Parallel is when you take multiple batteries and hook the positives to the positives and the negative to negative. When you do this you’re increasing the amperage and the voltage stays the same. So in the same scenario as above, you have (3) 12V 100AH batteries and if you connect them in parallel you’ll have a 12V 300AH battery bank.

How long will my lights last? Watts to Amps equation and your battery system

Take your total light watts. For instance you have (10) 50w lights. You’d have 500watts. If it’s a 12/24 light system you’ll need to divide by you Voltage.

Watts / voltage = Amps.

500Watts / 24Volts = 20.83 Amps

If you have a 24V bank of batteries that total to 150Ah’s ((2) 12V 150ah batteries in series to create 150AH @24V) you would take your total amp hours (150) and divide by 20.83amps

150AH Battery Bank / 20.83Amp draw = 7.2hrs of run time

This math works in rough estimations because all these lights aren’t often a true 50Watts and you’ll loose or gain some capacity over the course of the batteries life.

If you’re trying to figure out how long your trolling motor will last on a set of batteries, take a listen to the podcast. There isn’t an equation that can account for the variability in fishing styles and different demands needed on different nights.

Pro-Guide 31AGM Introduction Video