Re: 2 bank or 3 bank onboard charger
You can use either a two or three bank charger but my suggestion would be three bank and preferably one that "load shares". First -- the main requirement for multi-bank chargers used in series wired systems is that the charger MUST have isolated grounds which means that if you took a resistance measurement between all of the grounds you would read open circuit. The good news is most chargers today are built that way. Its like having two three totally independant chargers in one package. You simply hook each output to a battery. As for two or three banks -- three banks allows allows all three batteries to be constantly topped off. Chargers that do not have the load sharing feature have each output dedicated to the battery its connected to. Outputs on load sharing chargers can charge their dedicated battery first, then automatically switch to help out another output. Therefore a "non-load sharing" charger with say 10-10-10A outputs would have a 10A charger sitting idle most of the time as would be the case with the start battery since it rarely gets deeply discharged. It certainly won't hurt anything, but from an economic standpoint, a Schumacher 1.5A battery maintainer at $25.00 installed on the start battery and a dual bank charger for the troller batteries makes sense.
