Driving relays..is this acceptable?

colporteur  I've always been of the belief that placing the anti-spike diodes as close to the inductive spiking coils as possible is desired to minimize what is "felt" by the rest of the circuit.  Redundant diodes would only add to the protections.  I have nothing to back this up but the thought that three diodes will dissipate the energy faster than a single diode.

Hi Sean,

You can add as many relays (or any other load) as required, with the circuit as you've shown (or add extra diodes close to the relays as Mike mentions), if the total current consumption is supported by the MOSFET.

Flexibility is lost for independent control, which depends on your need. However if (say) there is later found to be too high a surge current for whatever is being powered by the relays, then it's harder to do anything about it.

Whereas if the relays were separately controlled, then they could be switched on in rapid sequence. It may not apply to your use-case, I'm just mentioning it as something to consider based on whatever you intend to do ultimately with it.

In summary, it is fine to switch multiple relays with a MOSFET.

The circuit looks good. As the others mentioned, put a snubber diode on each relay. Ensure the gate voltage provided by the resistor divider is sufficient to saturate the FET at the current it needs to drive the relays. (The gate threshold voltage is not enough) R1 shouldn't be too high a resistance because the gate capacitance will slow down turn-on and cause more power to be dissipated in the FET. R1 shouldn't be too low either to protect the VDRIVE from high current while charging the gate capacitance. If there is a lot of drain current, calculate if a heatsink is needed.

Much appreciate the response folks. My electronics knowledge is dusty. Thanks for looking over my shoulder. There are snubber diodes across each relay. I got lazy at midnight to add them to the sketch.