Electric Gate Voltage Drop

[Civeng]

Installing a Viking R6 gate opener 950 ft away from the house service. Only thing that will be powered. No lights.

Like a lot of openers, power requirements are low due to only needing to supply the onboard battery. Here’s the specs:

120VAC / 240VAC (5.5* Amp / 1.25 Amp) *Includes 3 amp load on receptacle

To reduce wire size, I will be running from a 240 circuit, thus 1.25 amp draw at opener.

My question is the voltage drop calculators tell me I can get away with #14 for <3% voltage drop. But this seems like small wire for a 950ft run.

My gate guy is telling me he wouldn’t go with anything higher than 10 AWG. Any thoughts?

 

[mike93lx]

If you really are only interested in serving the gate, then yes, 14 would work. Since the battery is powering the motor, there is no inrush on the a/c line, which also helps.

10 is a waste of money, but it's not the gate guy's money...

Any way to run it off a solar panel instead?

 

[Civeng]

Thanks for the reply Mike. Solar is an option, but the kit would cost as much or more than just running the wire. Plus just don’t like the look of solar panels, bit of a minimalist.

 

[mike93lx]

Thanks for the reply Mike. Solar is an option, but the kit would cost as much or more than just running the wire. Plus just don’t like the look of solar panels, bit of a minimalist.

I'm surprised. A roll of 14/2 uf-b will be over $500 plus the trenching an work to install. A pair of 320w panels should be under $400 plus a mount and charge controller.

Not a huge difference in materials cost, but to me, trenching 1000ft isn't appealing, plus you eliminate the risk of a wire damage and all the troubleshooting that will require

 

[Civeng]

The Viking solar panel kit for this opener is around $1,600 (VA-SOCHP), assuming I went with OEM.

Also reading the spec sheet for the opener more closely, I noticed this statement:

“Standard battery backup provides 400 continuous cycles at 100% duty cycle. With Vikings true battery backup system, batteries are not used during normal operations, maximizing battery life.”

So I was wrong about the incoming high voltage just supplying the onboard battery. Does that change your mind at all regarding the wire size?

 

[Walkers]

I have done many Vikings openers. If possible switch to a Liftmaster, as the Viking has a bad habit of blowing the circuit board at a cost of $600 a pop.
If you already have it, you can run the solar unit off any 12” x12” solar panel. There is not much difference between the solar unit and the ac powered unit, just remove the ac input section and you have a solar unit and add a second battery, easy peezy!