How long did your inverter's battery last?

Question

I have a SuKam 1400VA Pure Sine Wave inverter. The batteries (Sukam) have died out in merely 2 yrs flat, and I am told by the battery dealer that this is normal, as since last 2 years battery manufacturers have reduced quality of the batteries! Have you experienced a reduction in battery life as well?

Answer 1

I have found that a lot of battery dealers really don't know much about batteries. It almost sounds like the one you are dealing with either don't know much about batteries or he is smarter then I give him credit for. His goal might be to make money and if he can keep you killing batteries every couple of years he makes money. Batteries of good name brand and even those that are not of good name brand normally last 5 years easy and 10 years for most.

A battery life depends on how long they are left at a discharged status and how much they are discharged between full charges. If you discharge a batter by 20% it will last a lot longer then a battery that is discharged by 50%. I have 9 batteries on my solar power system and it has been over two years now and they are doing great.

One other thing is you should be using a deep cycle battery with an inverter. A car battery is for cranking amps not for deep discharging.

A car battery has thin lead plates in them which allows the battery to give a large boost of voltage all at once and needs to be charged back up right after the cranking is finished.

A deep cycle battery has thick plates and is made for slow discharging. It does not make a good cranking battery.

So chances are you were sold the wrong battery to start with. Or you are discharging them too deep. If you run the batteries all the way down before you recharge them I am suprised they lasted 2 years.