Power Wheelchair Batteries

Your Power chair operates on 24 Volts of current supplied by two 12 volt Deep Cycle Lead Acid batteries running side by side. They are located under the seat of a power chair and sometimes they may be inside a battery box. When your batteries have stopped taking a charge, or you notice your chair is losing power at a faster rate than usual it’s time for new batteries. You need to replace both batteries at the same time.

Power chair batteries are definitely not “one size fits all”. The amp hour rating of your battery indicates the actual size and the power capacity of the battery. A small transportable power chair may use 2-12 volt, 12 amp hour batteries, while a fast, full sized heavy duty power chair may require 2-12 volt 75 amp hour batteries to run it. Your owner’s manual will call out the right sized battery for your chair. If you need additional assistance, check the battery finder link and enter the make and model of your power chair, and the program will find your correct battery size for you: http://www.spinlife.com/batteryFinder/index.cfm

Don’t mistake automobile or lawn mower batteries for power chair batteries, they are very different and not interchangeable. Automobile batteries are known as starter or cold-cranking batteries. They are designed to provide large bursts of energy over a short period of time, not to run an electric motor over a long period of time. The deep-cycle lead-acid batteries used in power wheelchairs are designed to be discharged quite deeply, where each discharge cycle utilizes the majority of the battery’s available capacity.

Sealed lead-acid batteries are required for use in mobility devices for safety reasons. They require no maintenance and are sometimes referred to as non-spillable, or dry. To make them safe, the battery acid is contained in the cells using either Absorbed Glass Mat (AGM) or Gel. In simple terms, an AGM battery has fine glass fibers inside the cells of the battery which soak up the battery acid and keep it from splashing around inside the battery itself. AGM batteries are still sealed for safety, and are less expensive than Gel. In Gel batteries, a chemical agent is added to the battery acid, which turns it from a liquid into a gel inside the cells. Gel batteries are sealed for safety, and while they are more expensive, they generally have more charge/discharge cycles than AGM batteries so they last longer.

Transporting Batteries

All scooter and power chair batteries sold at SpinLife are approved by the Federal Aviation Administration for airline transportation. If you're planning a trip, be sure to check with the specific transportation service in advance. You can usually find this kind of information on the airline or transportation service website.