Panel battery died mid-commercial install, had to improvise fast

Last Tuesday I was finishing a commercial site in Tulsa and the backup battery on the DSC panel gave out right as I was testing the dialer, so the system kept throwing a low battery trouble signal every 20 seconds. I had an old 12V 7AH in my truck that I'd pulled from a swap-out months ago, but the terminals were corroded and it only held about 4.5 volts on my meter. I rigged up a temporary charge with a spare bench supply I keep for bench testing, sealed the panel back up, and told the client to expect a callback in a week, has anyone else ever had a battery die at the worst possible moment during a final walkthrough?

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nguyen.morgan1mo ago

That 7AH you rigged up probably saved the whole install, but I've learned the hard way to keep a spare freshly charged battery in the van for exactly this. I had a panel do the same thing once and the client watched the trouble beep go off, so I had to pretend it was part of the test loop. Your bench supply trick is way smarter than my move of just jumping the terminals with a car battery, that got spicy real quick.

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