Eliminating Battery Backup on Home Security System?

[jteneyck]

I have a typical, hard wired, home security system.  It has a battery backup for when the power goes out.  3 years ago I installed a whole house generator, so now when I lose power the generator powers everything back on in about 15 seconds.  The transition back to grid power has no interruption. 

The backup batteries last 2 to 3 years, and always seem to die when I'm away from home for an extended period of time, which just happened again.  That leads to lots of phone calls from the security monitoring people to me and then to my neighbor who takes care of things when I'm gone.  Now that I have the whole house generator, do I even need the backup battery?  The system runs just fine without it, although I have not yet tried pulling my main circuit breaker to see if it will power back on when the generator kicks in.  Any thoughts?

John

[meackerman]

how does the system handle the 15 second delay?

[daddo]

There are batteries that retain there charge up to 10 years in the package. Isn't there a better battery that can be used/fitted?

[atgcpaul]

Maybe it's a battery quality issue? Our security alarm battery lasted 9 years before it needed to be replaced last year.

[jteneyck]

I've tried several different brands.  None has lasted longer than 3 years. 

I'm all ears on a battery that lasts 9 or 10 years.  What brand?  It's a 12V, 7 AH battery.

John

[atgcpaul]

I've tried several different brands.  None has lasted longer than 3 years. 

I'm all ears on a battery that lasts 9 or 10 years.  What brand?  It's a 12V, 7 AH battery.

John

This is the old one.  Looks like the new one is the same one, too.

[daddo]

Sounds like you should check into capacitor discharge battery setups. Some of these can last almost a lifetime and you'll only need it for a minute of use.

[EricU]

Sounds like you should check into capacitor discharge battery setups. Some of these can last almost a lifetime and you'll only need it for a minute of use.

that sounds like a really good idea, but I don't see anything like that when I search.  Just a lot of info about supercapacitors.  Does someone actually make a battery-shaped object that uses caps?

[goaliedad]

12 volt? Why not use a car battery. Put a trickle charger on a timer to keep it charged up?

[jteneyck]

12 volt? Why not use a car battery. Put a trickle charger on a timer to keep it charged up?

My success with 12V deep discharge batteries for my old sump system was no better.  None lasted longer than 3 years.  Tried both low and high end trickle chargers on 4 different batteries, too.  Lead-acid batteries are made to be used; they don't seem to last very long when just left at idle at full charge.  That doesn't explain how another poster got 9 years out of his backup battery, to be sure, but my experience with them has been consistently poor.

John

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Sounds like you should check into capacitor discharge battery setups. Some of these can last almost a lifetime and you'll only need it for a minute of use.

Who makes them? 

John