Panel battery backup failed during a storm last night

We had a crazy storm roll through around 2am and the power flickered for about 20 minutes. Went to check on a clients system this morning and the backup battery was completely dead, never kicked over. Had to replace it with a new sealed lead acid 12v 7ah I had in my truck. Anyone else run into older batteries just giving up the ghost when the power actually drops?

3 comments

3 Comments

violar3512h ago

A 12v 7ah is usually for access control panels not backup for a whole system, that's pretty undersized. Standard alarm panels take a 12v 12ah or bigger for the main battery. If yours was running a 7ah it probably just couldn't handle the load and died when the power cut out.

miles_hall6h ago

Did you check the actual draw of your alarm panel before swapping batteries? I ran into the same issue with my system last year. The old 7ah battery was the original one from when the house was built, and it worked fine for years until we started having longer power outages. I looked up my panel specs and found it was pulling more than the battery could handle after about 8 hours without power. I went with a 12ah replacement instead and it made a huge difference. Now I get a full 14-16 hours of backup time even with all the sensors and the keypad running. It was a tight squeeze in the panel box but totally worth it for the peace of mind. That 7ah might work okay for short blips but anything over a few hours and you're just asking for trouble.

rose_reed6h ago

My buddy had the exact same thing happen to his alarm system a few years back. The battery was like 8 years old and just gave up during the first 30 minute outage it ever had to deal with. @miles_hall that tip about checking draw is solid, I'll have to pass that along to him.