Marine Technical Training Academy

  DC Circuit A Direct Current (DC) circuit is a circuit that Electric Current flows through in one direction.  DC is commonly found in many low-voltage applications, especially where these are powered by Battery.    Short Circuits A low-resistance connection established by accident or intention between two points in an electric circuit. The current tends to flow through the area of low resistance, bypassing the rest of the circuit. Series Circuit A series circuit is a circuit in which resistors are arranged in a chain, so the current has only one path to take. Solving Series Circuits Get here the Marine Electricity Handbook where you can find all the information on this and many other topics.                                                                Get the book Parallel Circuit A parallel circuit is a ci...

  Battery Storage Capacity The Amp-hour (Ah) Capacity of a battery tries to quantify the amount of usable energy it can store at a nominal voltage. Storage capacity is additive when batteries are wired in parallel but not if they are wired in series. When two 6V, 100Ah batteries are wired in Series, the voltage is doubled but the amp-hour capacity remains 100Ah (Total Power = 1200 Watt-hours). You may decide to wire batteries in series because a single 12V battery with the right storage capacity is simply too heavy, unwieldy, or awkward to lift into place. Batteries consisting of fewer cells (and hence lower voltage) in series can provide the same storage capacity yet be portable.  Two 6V, 100Ah batteries wired in Parallel will have a total storage capacity of 200Ah at 6V (or 1200 Watt-hours) Battery banks wired in Series-Parallel are even more complicated. Here, four 6V cells are wired in two "strings" of 12VDC that were then wired in parallel. Using 6V, 100Ah batteries, thi...