Battery With Internal Monitor And Display

A battery for marine applications includes multiple battery cells, a sense module, a communications module, a network interface, and a battery management system, all disposed within a watertight housing. The sense module includes circuitry for generating battery status information indicative of the status of the battery cells. The communications module receives the battery status information and transmits network communication data containing the battery status information. The network interface is configured to connect directly to a standard NMEA 2000 network connector and communicate the battery status information via the standard NMEA 2000 network connector to an NMEA 2000 network. The battery management system measures the voltage of each battery cell and determines a voltage difference between a lowest-voltage cell and a highest-voltage cell and balances the charging of the plurality of battery cells to maintain the voltage difference at less than a predetermined maximum value.