Battery replacement question

**oafpatroll** · 28-05-2023, 16:12

I put a Blu Nova in my Centurion gate motor and it's been chugging along merrily for close to a year now. Also have the 14ah replacement size on my long distance exterior beams and that is at well over a year. Lead acids kakked in both applications much sooner than this. You just have to check the minimum required charge voltage of the battery as some devices, such as my ancient DSC Power 832 based alarm system don't give out enough pixies aand the BMS turns the battery off when it reaches whatever its minimum SOC is.

**oafpatroll** · 28-05-2023, 16:17

Originally Posted by HadEnuf

I’m not overthinking it. If the motor doesn’t operate 2 hrs after loadshitting started, with zero gate movement, it’s either not charging properly or it’s discharging. I have reverted to manual mode, because if I get caught outside my property with a gate that won’t function, I’m worried my dog won’t come and unhook the motor and let me in.

I’m prepared to see if a Li replacement with the built-in BMS might give me better service. The current SLA battery is only a few months old.

I wonder if your gate isn't dragging a wheel or something as my Centurion D5 motor would run a few days on battery only. When the bearing in one of the wheels shat and seized it was noticeably slower on battery and died stone dead a couple days later. Never let anyone accuse my wife of mechanical sympathy. She noticed the slowing while i was away on a trip but decided to let it sort itself out.

*Edit* This was when it had a SLA battery and I assume the drag caused it to draw way harder on the battery than it could handle ito SOC.

**Vaal** · 28-05-2023, 16:36

Originally Posted by Messor

It’s not a UPS, it does not need to provide continues current.
Stop overthinking it, you don’t need lithium, I’ve been running 12 years on my gate motor with two batteries.

Look we are all paranoid because Esdom and all, but no, open and close times are extremely short operating durations.

Lithium requires substantial computer micro management, or it's useless, that is why a lead-acid is a battery, a lithium is a "managed battery".

Congratulations with only using 2 batteries in 12 years. That sounds a lot like my previous batteries when we had permanent power.
Lets hope my gate motor battery will also last so long after installing a pv system. Interesting to see that most of my neighbors still have gate motor problems.

**Messor** · 28-05-2023, 16:49

Originally Posted by Vaal

Congratulations with only using 2 batteries in 12 years. That sounds a lot like my previous batteries when we had permanent power.
Lets hope my gate motor battery will also last so long after installing a pv system. Interesting to see that most of my neighbors still have gate motor problems.

Go do the math, we are all in the same boat.
Firstly, we are all load shedded twice a day, and you don’t run your gate for all that time, you run it randomly(IF) during that time, and even then you run it for a few seconds.
This is not time under load, this is time under being in reserve(since first world countries have power and they design their systems this way).

But I also have a centurion motor, I also understand our power situation, I also have to get by, I am just stating what is.

But as was wisely stated, only if you don’t run a brothel.

**oafpatroll** · 28-05-2023, 17:25

Twice? You are living the life. Our standard is now three or four.

**atunguyd** · 28-05-2023, 18:51

Problem is compounded I am sure by the cheap Chinese lead acid batteries that you seem you only get these days. Anyone notice him much lighter they are these days.

If your plates are only thin lead then they are going to sulphate pretty quickly.

Sent from my SM-S908E using Tapatalk

**Vaal** · 28-05-2023, 22:54

A very interesting table.

**Messor** · 29-05-2023, 17:43

For fun (or boredom) my father has built a few lanterns, just about one for each person in the family. The outer is fiberglass, the bulbs are DC, the charger is a gate motor charger and the battery a standard 12v7A battery with a PC-type power adaptor. In playing around he’s bought quite a few different batteries and as such I can tell you straight sometimes make instead of type counts more.

Hence I have a lot of firsthand experience with the exact technology mentioned in this thread, the chargers and batteries of gate motors.
Some lead acid batteries are just useless, some are actually pretty good, but it is astounding how their performance vary and how that said performance have the capacity to induce negative opinions about the technology itself.

**oafpatroll** · 29-05-2023, 18:16

Lead acid technology, no matter how well it has been implemented has limitations, as do all of them. One of those is that it doesn't handle repeated low levels of discharge well. If you have an application where repeated low levels of discharge are experienced then they won't last very long and it doesn't matter how much you paid for them. You can mitigate that by having a large reserve capacity but that comes with additional cost, weight and space. I put in a whole house UPS in 2008 and replaced the high end 200ah batteries 3 times before I gave up on the thing. The last batch cost > R50k. Lead acid is good for all sorts of applications but it's not great for daily 'line of business' use. The family friend who I got my stuff from has been in the business since the cellphone network boom of the mid 90's and he reckons that much fewer customers opt for lead now in industrial comms applications.