[vidguy]

My co-worker bought a trolling motor for his boat. It's a 24 volt motor.
He wants to get enough battery power to run for 4-6 hours in the course of a day.
We were talking about how to wire up multiple 12 volt Marine Deep Cycle batteries and how you might hook them up to the inboard outboard charging system.

Does anyone here:
Know how to best wire up multiple 24 volt batteries?
Best way to charge them hopefully in the boat?

Any experience helpful as my limited electrical knowledge kept me from really giving him good advice.
Thanks

[John62]

Are you sure it is a 24v trolling motor, I don't fish but I understand trolling motors are usually 12v. First you ask about multiple 12v then you ask about multiple 24v. Not sure I understand the question. Your boat motor should be 12v. If your trolling motor is 24v then if using 12v motors you connect the positive of battery one to the positive on the trolling motor. you then connect the negative of battery one to the positive of battery two. Then connect the negative of battery two to the negative of the trolling motor. that is called Series wiring. You add them together. But do not do this with three batteries or you will have 36v. Connecting this to the boat charging system likely won't work even if you disconnect the batteries to keep them 12 v each because the charging system is not built to do this and deep cycle batteries take several hours to charge.

[TheSilverBuick]

I agree on double checking the actual voltage rating of the motor, it sounds unusual.

Hook them up in series to increase voltage (Negative to positive of the next battery, etc), hook them up in parallel to keep the same voltage just add amperage capacity (Negative to negative, etc). To hook up four batteries and keep it 24 volts is doable as two pairs in parallel and then run one line from positive to negative between the pairs.

x2 on an inboard boat charging system not being able to charge the batteries. One mis-placed wire with a 24v battery bank and a 12v charging system and you'll have a fried charging system and possibly any other electrical components in the boat. It would take some fancy wiring and parts to use a 12v charging system to charge up 24v batteries. Not impossible, but not straight forward.

At the end of the day, since the question is being asked, you probably want some one there verifying the setup before hooking it up. It is fairly easy to explode batteries and burn up motors when done wrong.

[vidguy]

Thanks John
My Buddy told me it was a 24 volt motor. like these
https://goo.gl/lbTR1i

So he was looking at getting 2 24 volt batteries to extend his time on a single charge, OR 2 12 volt batteries he could wire to produce 24 volts.

[Will]

Wiring in series increases voltage. Wiring in parallel increases capacity.

So, if motor is 24V:

2 x 12V batteries - wire them in series. That is, connect the (-) on one battery to the (+) on the other. Then connect the remaining (+) and (-) to the motor.

2 x 24V batteries - wire in parallel. Connect (+) to (+) and (-) to (-) on both batteries then run (+) and (-) from one battery to motor.

[John62]

I would study the benefits of going 24v on the motor. Most 24v batteries are small, not car size so the hold a shorter charge time wise. Then you will also need a 24v battery charger. I would go 12v motor and two 12v battries in parallel as Will shows. Connect all the plus's and all the negatives together to the motor and in this case you can do as many batteries as you wish. Just make sure the wire size between batteries is large enough and the motor has built in overload protection. Or go as per my first comment, use 2 12v batteries in Series and you can separate them for use on a standard 12v charger.
http://forums.maxperformanceinc.com/...1&d=1462898685

[tom s]

Most hipo trolling motors are 24V.A pair of 12V deep cycles are the answer.I forgot how mine were wired for charging.They do make 24V 110V chargers.Pretty easy to find.Might even check Bass Pro or Cabelas.Tom

[vidguy]

Thanks fellas! Appreciate the info.

[stellar]

Check out (tollbridge 24) on google if you don't want a lot of manual switches to be hooked up.

[cdrookie]

there's videos on youtube of how to hook up the 24V trolling motor(yes there is such a thing, they even have 36V trolling motors). benefit of 24V is obviously more power for heavy boats, and/or rough water conditions. downfall is they suck more juice and may not last all day depending on how good the batteries are. a 12V 55pd/thrust motor will last all day with 2 batteries but not have the grunt of the bigger 24V motors. they sell onboard battery chargers that you bolt into the battery well and just plug it in at the end of the day and it will charge/tend the batteries. bass pro, cabbalas, gander mtn, ebay, etc etc sell them.