"It will take just a moment to have the battery connected," the sales manager said.
Consider a battery connected with wires to a light bulb.
When a battery or cell is connected to a charging circuit the wrong way around.
If the two batteries are not connected together, there is no way for electrons in one battery to get to the other.
The columns together essentially act as batteries connected in parallel.
When the key is released the battery is again connected to earth.
Capacitors can be separated from a battery, then connected in series.
Also the battery could be connected to a clock and the lights extinguished in just a moment.
Again these were arranged into six banks, now each having 17 parallel pairs of batteries connected in series.
Because your batteries are not connected together, they are independent from each other and there is no common reference point.