Battery Bank Configuration - Wiring

With that many batteries, I would connect each of them to a positive and a negative bus bar.  Then run wires from each of the bus bars to the inverter. 

The bus bars I use are actually grounding bars for circuit breaker boxes.  I got them for about $5 each from a hardware store.

Keep all wires as short as possible, and use heavy guage wire.

If you still want to connect the inverter directly to the batteries though, you should connect the plus wire to battery 1, and the negative wire to battery 12. Then each battery has the same amount of jumpers between it and the inverter. Draw this out if you're not sure what I'm talking about. 

John
 

John/Travis
The bus bar method was mentioned in the article http://www.smartgauge.co.uk/batt_con.html well sort of, it mentioned connecting each battery or group of 4 and on to the inverter.

The bus bar option I like, however, how do I keep the wires short and all 12 of them to the same connection point?

I have the batteries in a vertical rack with 3 batteries on each of 4 shelves.

I think this is going the right way, just need to resolve the above question.

By the way, the article is interesting and is worth a read!

Many thanks

Steve

Thanks again John, Yep it looks like the best option is going to be use the bus bar option. The problem I have now is how do I connect all the batteries to the inverter?

Specifically:

How do I keep all cables as short as possible?
How do I keep interconnections to a minimum?
Which metal has the lowest resistance (that is affordable)?

Help/suggestions would be appreciated

Steve

Steve,

Travis has the right idea.  The box keeps all of the wires safely enclosed and out of sight.  On the other hand, I try to get by as cheap as possible.  I poked around in the electrical section of my local hardware store and found bus bars for about $5.00 each.  Each bar allows about 15 heavy guage wires to be attached to it via large set screws.  I mounted each of the bars on a piece of plexiglass (for insulation).

Important:  Use the heaviest guage wire you can from the bus bar to the inverter, and keep THOSE wires as short as possible.  Those wires will be passing the heaviest current.

To answer your other questions:  You'll just have to use heavy guage wire, and keep each one as short as possible. I believe copper would be best.  The bus-bar arangement limits the number of connection points, so that helps.  I bought some large copper crimp lugs from Wal-Mart and soldered the wire to them instead of crimping. 

John