Drop in Lithium battery replacement for alarm system

[supersunbird]

No. What you get with lithium is the ability to accept a higher charge rate, thus to recharge quicker. It won't recharge quicker though if you are using the same charger on the device that is currently charging the lead acid battery. It's common sense - if the charger is only 1A, it can only recharge 1A per hour regardless of the battery type you have.

If you use 2A during a 2 hour load shedding , then you can recharge your battery within 2 hours and be ready for the next loadshedding bout only if your charger capacity is 1A.

However if you drop in a lithium battery and now you can discharge to 80% capacity you now need to recharge 3A within the next 4 hours - still doable with a 1A charger, not with a 0.5A or 0.8A charger.

The trick is to match your load and battery capacity , to that which can be replaced in 4 hours.

Therefore: if you have a 0.8A charger, and a load of 1.6A, keeping in mind the 50% Depth Of Discharge limit for a lead acid battery, you should be comfortable with 2 hours of load shedding.

That is only one benefit you mentioned, but not the one I care about.

Example: If there is a 8 hour power outage (an unexpected event) at home that starts shortly after I leave for work. Is there someone to monitor the lead acid to turn off everything when it reaches 50% DoD or it will it run to 80% or 90% or totally flat? If it ran flat it will very soon be unable to handle even the 2 hour loadsheddings that it could handle before.

With the Blue Nova at least if it runs totally flat, I could monitor the CCTV remotely (or whatever the use case is) for the 6 or 7 hours it was able to stay up before it ran flat, and the battery would continue to be usable in the future, and will be able to still handle loadshedding or other longish outages again, without degrading to an unusable state. I don't have to waste time and energy to sort out/install a new battery (time is money) after such a long outage and I don't have to try to have a lead acid system that can handle 8 hours and only reach 50% DoD after 8 hours.

So in short, the benefit of being able to charge quicker is of less importance to me than the ability to keep being usable after deep discharges.

 

[BrandonJ]

That is only one benefit you mentioned, but not the one I care about.

Example: If there is a 8 hour power outage (an unexpected event) at home that starts shortly after I leave for work. Is there someone to monitor the lead acid to turn off everything when it reaches 50% DoD or it will it run to 80% or 90% or totally flat? If it ran flat it will very soon be unable to handle even the 2 hour loadsheddings that it could handle before.

With the Blue Nova at least if it runs totally flat, I could monitor the CCTV remotely (or whatever the use case is) for the 6 or 7 hours it was able to stay up before it ran flat, and the battery would continue to be usable in the future, and will be able to still handle loadshedding or other longish outages again, without degrading to an unusable state. I don't have to waste time and energy to sort out/install a new battery (time is money) after such a long outage and I don't have to try to have a lead acid system that can handle 8 hours and only reach 50% DoD after 8 hours.

So in short, the benefit of being able to charge quicker is of less importance to me than the ability to keep being usable after deep discharge

At 50% DOD you could expect a >5000 cycle life from a lithium battery, at 80% it degrades to >3000 and at 100% even further to >2000. Thus even the cycle life of lithium will degrade if you discharge at 80% or 100%.

Calculate your load and capacity to operate the battery at maximum efficiency. That's the best advice I can give.

 

[Kosmik]

Hey folks, bit of a ressurect but on a side note my damn D5 EVO battery is now dead and I want to do a lithuim replacement. I can't seem to find the normal ones and this has mixed opinions?

High Cycle Batteries

Buy High Cycle Batteries online at the Best Prices! Door to Door and Overnight Delivery. Voted the best online store in SA. View Here

www.geewiz.co.za

Lots of other sites say its the right one with up to 10A discharge but Geewize are saying its only a 5A discharge? I'm sure they had others at one point ( fosgate, vestwood ) but everyone seems to be de-listing them.

Communica has the same battery but its higher?

BATT 12,8V7 SCP

Securi-Prod BATT 12,8V7 SCP Batteries Securi-POD Lithium Ion Rechargeable Battery (LiFePO4) 12.8V 7AH 89.6Wh, High Cycle Life:<2000 @ 0.2C 80% DOD, Charge Current:1.4A, Max Charge Current:6A Max, Built-In-BMS, Cut-Off Voltage 8V, F1 Terminal 4.8mm, 151x65x99mm, IP56, 1.1kgLithium Ion...

www.communica.co.za

Has anyone uses one of these in a D5 Evo ( non-smart )? I need to check my gate settings but I think it does show me the amps as well in the limits and that sits at around ~3ish so it should work but will check that later today

 

[Kosmik]

Damn, checked my limits now and its reckoning 11amps, not 3.

Not sure about these, they have a 7ah and a 12ah version, same dimensions but can handle the higher current.

https://redpoleenergy.co.za/product/lithium-batteries/12v-batteries/alarm-gate-lithium-battery-upgrade-12v-7ah-sla-alternative/

But would it be safe to say stay on the 7ah? I mean a normal SLA battery thats a 7ah can only output so much although the spec sheets don't seem to list exactly what whereas the lithuims do.

Otherwise I can go for the higher lithium in the same family, should definitely handle it all, can discharge at 14A and has nearly twice the capacity same form factor, just not sure if worth the extra cost.

12V 12Ah 153Wh Lithium Battery – Alarm / Gate Upgrade | Red Pole Energy

redpoleenergy.co.za

 

[hilton]

For the price of the 12Ah from Redpole I would get two 7Ah from Communica and just rotate them. The problem is the charging time for the 12Ah especially when stage 6 is upon us.

 

[hilton]

Well I just bought six of the 7Ah batteries from Communica and I 'think' my gate motors are either D3 or D5 but not smart. I'll let you know.

 

[Tim_vb]

The LiFePo 7AH batteries I installed in my complex centurion D10 gate motor have worked flawlessly over the last 6 months of loadshedding including a stage 6 - bought them from GeeWiz

 

[chickenbeef]

Hey folks, bit of a ressurect but on a side note my damn D5 EVO battery is now dead and I want to do a lithuim replacement. I can't seem to find the normal ones and this has mixed opinions?

High Cycle Batteries

Buy High Cycle Batteries online at the Best Prices! Door to Door and Overnight Delivery. Voted the best online store in SA. View Here

www.geewiz.co.za

Lots of other sites say its the right one with up to 10A discharge but Geewize are saying its only a 5A discharge? I'm sure they had others at one point ( fosgate, vestwood ) but everyone seems to be de-listing them.

Communica has the same battery but its higher?

BATT 12,8V7 SCP

Securi-Prod BATT 12,8V7 SCP Batteries Securi-POD Lithium Ion Rechargeable Battery (LiFePO4) 12.8V 7AH 89.6Wh, High Cycle Life:<2000 @ 0.2C 80% DOD, Charge Current:1.4A, Max Charge Current:6A Max, Built-In-BMS, Cut-Off Voltage 8V, F1 Terminal 4.8mm, 151x65x99mm, IP56, 1.1kgLithium Ion...

www.communica.co.za

Has anyone uses one of these in a D5 Evo ( non-smart )? I need to check my gate settings but I think it does show me the amps as well in the limits and that sits at around ~3ish so it should work but will check that later today

Not sure how the securi-prods fair in a D5 Evo but I have a Blue Nova in mine and had to reduce the gate speed a few notches from MAX to get it to work.

It has been working fine since Dec 2021, with Lead Acid I would have probably had to replace it a few times in this period.

 

[TedLasso]

I have the blunova batteries for gate and garage door, and electric fence.

No issues with them but now the house never loses power normally as.i have invertet backup.

On a community WhatsApp group, some mentioned in the last week that Centurion had sent out a notice in the last few weeks saying not to install lithium batteries. So there's that.

Never bothered to go research why bcos I couldn't find anything on their website

 

[billy786]

I put a lithoum 12v 8ah battery on my paradox mg5050 - it has an olarm connected, 2 keypadsn siren, light and a gsm connected to the armed response company. Any reason why my alarm would die after 20 mins when connected with this lithium battery? My old lead acid 12v 7ah battery lasts a full 2 hour loadshedding connected to the same set up.

Supplier replaced the battery. Same thing happend... then I connected it to my electric fence and it works for the full 2 hour loadshedding (still had a charge too even though I removed it during loadshedding from my dead alarm panel).

 

[Kosmik]

I put a lithoum 12v 8ah battery on my paradox mg5050 - it has an olarm connected, 2 keypadsn siren, light and a gsm connected to the armed response company. Any reason why my alarm would die after 20 mins when connected with this lithium battery? My old lead acid 12v 7ah battery lasts a full 2 hour loadshedding connected to the same set up.

Supplier replaced the battery. Same thing happend... then I connected it to my electric fence and it works for the full 2 hour loadshedding (still had a charge too even though I removed it during loadshedding from my dead alarm panel).

Something is draining. Had no issues with my mg5050. The light is one that stays on when a alarm is on? Check that. But it does sound odd.

 

[BrandonJ]

I put a lithoum 12v 8ah battery on my paradox mg5050 - it has an olarm connected, 2 keypadsn siren, light and a gsm connected to the armed response company. Any reason why my alarm would die after 20 mins when connected with this lithium battery? My old lead acid 12v 7ah battery lasts a full 2 hour loadshedding connected to the same set up.

Supplier replaced the battery. Same thing happend... then I connected it to my electric fence and it works for the full 2 hour loadshedding (still had a charge too even though I removed it during loadshedding from my dead alarm panel).

Likely that the charging system is not compatible with the battery and it's bms.

 

[BrandonJ]

I have the blunova batteries for gate and garage door, and electric fence.

No issues with them but now the house never loses power normally as.i have invertet backup.

On a community WhatsApp group, some mentioned in the last week that Centurion had sent out a notice in the last few weeks saying not to install lithium batteries. So there's that.

Never bothered to go research why bcos I couldn't find anything on their website

I first noticed the about turn from Blue Nova , claiming that the batteries are not designed for alarms and gates. In fact the frequent activation of the bms protections is considered abuse and improper usage, then I noted my alarm system distributors started adding multiple disclaimers to the use of lithium batteries in alarms, and then centurion issued its notice about deploying lithium batteries in its motors.

It was just a foreseeable matter of time.

 

[BrandonJ]

My 12V 8ah Gel lasted about 2.5 years of loadshedding. Not bad since we also had frequent multi-day power outages. Those 7ah are really cheap LA batteries and are only there to provide an occasional backup for a few hours.

I also set my Paradox to charge at 850ma via the keypad. It's easy enough if you have the installer code and download the programming manual. You just enter the code for the charging setting and then change the specific bit to 1 or 0.

If the load on your alarm system is not excessive and doesn't discharge the battery below 50% in the 2 hours, the battery could last quite some time.

This is where focus should be rather than replacing with expensive lithium. Focus on matching 50% dod , with run time and battery capacity. Much cheaper over time.

 

[W@P]

When i replaced my gates batteries with Blue Nova lithiums i confirmed with Centurion and Blue Nova that it would work. This was in Oct 2021.

 

[BrandonJ]

When i replaced my gates batteries with Blue Nova lithiums i confirmed with Centurion and Blue Nova that it would work. This was in Oct 2021.

Give them a call now - you may find they have changed their minds.

 

[W@P]

Give them a call now - you may find they have changed their minds.

Jip thought so.

 

[hilton]

So if these 7Ah Lifepo4 batteries are not to be used in gate motors or alarms or garage door motors or UPS then where exactly are they all being installed?

 

[Kosmik]

So if these 7Ah Lifepo4 batteries are not to be used in gate motors or alarms or garage door motors or UPS then where exactly are they all being installed?

Nah they are saying it should be used with a proper charger for lithuim vs the sla chargers. But also many are fine. I still think there's some drain on that battery as I have the same panel and it works fine but mine is heavily wireless so very light draw save for the radio. There is something draining his battery.

@billy786 you can try increase your charge current via babyware but that won't help your discharge rate. From what I read, besides the fact of the higher discharge and recovery, the one thing that a lithuim does NOT do well in, is a sustained HIGH ampage out. SLA's are superior in that. I assume that's because these are LiFe based vs LiPO as Lipo are built for massive discharge.

 

[Grubscrew]

I run them in a d5 centurion motor and gemini gate motor no complaints sofar, going a year plus.