The Need For Wheelchair Batteries

Power wheelchairs or electric wheelchairs are becoming very popular nowadays as they offer greater mobility than manual models and can make you that much more independent. With a power wheel chair, you can conserve your energy which would have otherwise been spent in pushing your wheelchair around. This energy can instead be used towards other activities thus increasing your self esteem and confidence in your own skills. But have you ever stopped to consider how all this is made possible? If not for wheelchair batteries, it just might not have been!

The most important part of a power wheel chair, by far, is the wheel chair battery. A battery is what supplies electricity to different parts of your power wheelchair and enables it to be moved and turned. If you use your wheelchair throughout the day, the battery will need to be charged daily so as to have enough electricity to keep your wheelchair functioning all day long.

Many batteries get damaged if they are used till they discharge completely. But as wheelchair batteries are a type known as deep cycle batteries, they can be used till full discharge without causing too much harm to the battery. But having said that, if you do keep your battery charged at all times, you can extend its life considerably. While charging your wheelchair battery, you need not worry about charging it too much and damaging it, as they are typically automatic and will not charge more than they need to.

Types of Wheel Chair Batteries

Although there are many different kinds of wheelchair batteries available, and they differ in size, weight, capacity, speed etc; all can be put into two broad classifications. These are:

1. Wet batteries: A wet wheel chair battery is one which needs to be fed distilled water every couple of months. If you forget to do so, and the water level in the wet battery goes lower than the indicated mark, your wet battery can be damaged beyond repair. Because of this, and also because these batteries are quite hard to keep watered, they are not very popular with wheelchair users.
2. Gel batteries: A gel wheelchair battery does not require you to add distilled water to it, ever. They are easier to maintain than wet ones and also easier to transport. But if you do use your wheelchair very often, and that too for long miles traveled, you may be better off with a wet battery as a gel wheel chair battery has 20% lesser power and capacity than a wet one.

Whichever type of battery you go in for, its term will depend on your wheelchair usage. An occasional wheelchair user can use the same battery for as much as two years whereas someone who uses their wheelchair daily may have to change their wheelchair batteries much sooner than that. If you do feel that your wheelchair is not moving quite as well as it once did, especially on a fully charged battery, then it may be time to replace your wheelchair batteries.