Tester for gel-cell batteries?

[Soundy 1]

Anyone have or recommend a tester for sealed lead-acid (aka gel-cell) batteries as used in alarm and access panels, UPS backups, etc.? Are these things particularly expensive? Not just a multimeter, but something that can check the capacity and health of the battery... like an automotive battery tester, but smaller (and hopefully cheaper)?

[Nimrod 0]

There is no simple way to test a gel cell battery ( i am assuming this is a sealed type). There is a discharge test were you put a known load on it and monitor the voltage drop over time to test its health. Another test is if the manufacturer of the device it is in gave you a voltage drop spec for a charged condition, to loss of power. This is a instantaneous reading you can do with any voltmeter, it is not a voltage drop over time just a quick test for a indication of goodness.

 

For exit light signs electricians usually just hit the test button and watch the light for 5 or 10 seconds. If it stays fairly bright it is considered good.

[Soundy 1]

Yeah, these are for access-control panels - batteries are used to maintain function in a power loss. Various problems with the panels lead me to suspect (with confirmation from the manufacturer) that the transformers are under-rated for them, and I suspect the batteries have been picking up the slack until recently. Building super has no idea when they were last changed, let alone tested... we've quoted to simply replace them all, but with 10+ batteries, it does add up.

[hardwired 0]

Looks like the ones that do a full load test are in the few hundred dollar range, this one looked fairly nice http://www.powerwerx.com/tools-meters/computerized-battery-analyzer-3-cba-iii.html(full PC logging, and pretty high accuracy)... OR, just plan on throwing the batteries away (er...recycling them!) after three years. They seem to usually start going bad fairly soon after the three year mark on average, from what I've seen.