Why use a 12v converter for LED lights and stereo?

[Stewbuntu]

I have a 36v w 6 batteries.

All the converters have bad reviews and seem like junk.

Why not just hook up the stereo across two of the batteries and the lights to another 2 batteries?

With a Bluetooth stereo (no CD option) and LEDs I can't imagine the draw would be to high (less than a couple watts) or much to change the discharge a lot vs the other batteries

Sent from my Lenovo PB2-650Y using Tapatalk

[LukeL]

#1: It will cause an uneven load across your batteries. You want the batteries to all discharge and charge evenly and stay balanced.

#2: The best voltage reducers come from ScottyB at cartsunlimited.net


Club Car DS driver’s club #59

[TexTurbo]

The battery drain from LED lights and stereo is substantially more than “a couple of watts” .... more like 5-7 amps.

In simple terms, the drain from the 2 Batteries used will not be replaced entirely by your charger as the charger treats the batteries as one large battery.

Over a period of a time those two Batteries will be substantially lower voltage than the rest of your battery pack. You will see quite a loss of performance.

Do like our friend Luke says....
Get yourself a quality reducer from Scottyb, you and your very expensive Batteries will be happy !

[scottyb]

When 1 or 2 batteries are drawn down lower than the rest of the pack the problem begins to snowball in the charge cycle.
The charger gives the same input to all the batteries in the pack. It looks only for the total voltage to reach the cut off point. You can easily see that the 2 low ones are going to stay low and the 4 higher ones are going to go higher.
This happens over and over. This is where the snowball starts rolling. The 4 batteries without the extra draw are reaching a higher charge than the 2 which started lower. Eventually the lower 2 simply remain lower in SOC and the 4 higher get overcharged because (remember) the charger is only looking for a total voltage value to cutoff. This imbalance will diminish the pack performance and useful life term.
The bottom line is a good quality DC reducer is a must.
The same goes for the built in CC reducers that converted 16v to 12v. These were common in 48v carts from 1995 - 2005 or so. They ran lights off of 2 of the 6 batteries in the pack.