Calcha Posted June 5, 2023 Share Posted June 5, 2023 Hi All. I'm looking to upgrade a buildings gate motor (centurion) battery with a bigger external battery (80ah) with a smart charger connected directly to it. My question is this: will it be ok to run the wire directly to the smaller gate motor battery or rather remove the smaller battery and run it directly. Also can or should I try remove the gate motors internal charger, or would that cause alarms or any issues. Thanks your advice is appreciated Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Modina Posted June 5, 2023 Share Posted June 5, 2023 If your 80Ah battery is far away from the gate motor, then you can run a thin cable and leave the small 7..2Ah SLA in place. Your small SLA will then act as a short term reservoir (nearly like a capacitor) to handle the high current for the motor. If the large battery is close by (not further than about 2m), then remove the small battery and use relatively thick cable (2.5mm2 house wire should be OK). Your smart charger might apply high voltage pulses a fair bit higher than the typical 13.85V float charger output. It might be best to remove the internal charger, but I think it should be OK with it connected. (There are a number of different circuits used to implement a float charger, so one can't say for sure.) A smart battery charger is normally intended for occasional car battery charging. In this application it will progress through it's charging algorithm and at some point consider the charging as complete and then just maintain float charging. It often requires a complete reset to re-initiate a new charging process. This means the 230VAC as well as the battery would need to be disconnected. In your application you will not disconnect the charger from the battery. You cannot assume with 100% certainty that once the mains is restored, the battery charger is reset and will automatically go into a new charging cycle. This depends on the charger. It might, or might not happen. The only way to know is to test it. I would not trust the user manual to inform you, as much of these are written in Chinglish and are really superficial. In case your smart charger needs a proper power reset, you could implement that with a mains-powered relay. You could wire it in such a way that when the mains drops, the relay also drops out and disconnects the battery. HOWEVER, often these chargers have a high/low charge rate settings. The default is always the low current setting and needs to be manually overridden every time, after a reset... So it might be a good idea to buy a smart charger with only a single charge current setting. The above is applicable for typical 12V lead acid chargers you buy at Midas or Takealot. Otherwise you would need to spend more and get a Victron which should not have any of the above issues. Energy-Jason 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Calcha Posted June 5, 2023 Author Share Posted June 5, 2023 Hi Modina I would be using a victron smart charger and it was my first choice and it definitely cancels a few of the issues that could have been experienced from my research and as you mentioned. Thank you, this information helps a lot and clears quite a few doubts I had The cable run will be about 4m long. But I think it might be best to disconnect the internal charger as it won't really be needed and test it like that and If I do experience any issues I can just reconnect it. If no issues are experienced I can simply just completely remove it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Modina Posted June 5, 2023 Share Posted June 5, 2023 Well, at least with the Victron charger, you could switch to Lithium batteries at a later stage. The small-form-factor Victron chargers are IP65. That is a good and a bad thing. They are waterproof which might be handy for something living close to a gate motor? But IP65 means Victron embedded the electronics is some potting or rubber compound making this charger unserviceable if ever something would go wrong. jasweb 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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