Does the ampere-hour capacity of a battery have any bearing on battery life?
No. As long as the ampere-hour capacity is sufficient to drive the load during loss of ac control power for the prescribed time, the ampere-hour capacity does not affect battery life. Higher ampere-hour capacity increases the ride-through time when ac power is lost but, as a consequence, the time to fully recharge the batteries also increases. Does testing affect battery life? It can. Some RTUs feature frequent automatic battery testing. One RTU manufacturer tests the batteries for thirty minutes, every 24 hours. If this function is enabled, the application is most likely cyclic because it frequently deep-discharges the batteries in order to test them. S&C recommends that customers either disable this function or contact the RTU manufacturer to determine how to decrease the frequency of the tests from daily to monthly cycles. But EnergyLine tests the batteries in their switch controls daily. Why isn’t this a cyclic application? Unlike other RTU manufacturers, EnergyLine conducts an int
