Electric gate motors in homes, complexes and business parks are being compromised by the frequency of load shedding.
Gate motors using a lead acid battery, which is the most common gate motor battery in South Africa, are not capable of being completely discharged and recharged as frequently as we are seeing with ongoing loadshedding, says Michael Rogers, MD of Uniross Batteries.
If the lead acid battery is regularly drained to below 50 percent and then recharged, the lifespan and performance will deteriorate significantly. This can especially happen when loadshedding is at Stage 4 or higher or in complexes and business parks which have high volumes of traffic causing the lead acid battery to become fully discharged, he explains.
As a solution, new lithium battery technology is better suited to these deep and frequent discharges and are designed to give an excellent life span even if they are repeatedly fully discharged.
Lithium batteries can run completely flat (100% depth of discharge) without causing damage to the battery, making the technology ideally suited to a gate motor (especially those that are used in complexes or business parks where the traffic is high). In addition, lithium batteries can be used up to 2 000 times as opposed to 250 to 300 times for a lead acid battery.