When you want to secure your property, a fence with an automatic gate is a great option. However, many homeowners avoid automatic gates because of the cost associated with the electricity demand. However, you don't have to increase your utility bills to maintain an automatic gate on your property.

Solar-powered gates give you the benefits of the automatic gate without the increased utility costs. If you considered a solar-powered gate for your property, you need to know some things ahead of time for the best chances of success.

In order to get the maximum benefit from the solar panels you install for your automatic gate, those panels must get as much sunlight as possible. To do this, you must know how the sun travels across the property. To determine this, you will need to track the sun pattern for your property.

Remember that the sun's path changes throughout the year, so while you might think that just watching the sunlight for a day or two is enough, that brief observation really is not sufficient. You have to know where the sun will fall throughout the entire year. The best way to get a clear sun activity picture is with a solar property survey.

The goal is to install the panels somewhere that the sunlight falls consistently throughout the year as well as for as much of the day as possible. The more sunlight the panels absorb, the greater your power storage capacity will be. Adequate power storage ensures reliable operation of your gate all the time.

Solar gate openers come in various watt units. The sunlight availability will directly affect how much operational time you will get from them. A lower watt unit provides fewer opening cycles than a higher watt model.

The heavier your gate, the more power you will need. If you opt for a lower watt unit for a heavy gate, the low-power unit may leave you with an opener that only provides a small number of opening cycles per day. The limitation can be little more than a nuisance but can also prove to be a safety concern if your gate has insufficient power to close and secure your property or to open in case of an emergency.

Familiarize yourself with the power demands of the gate you install and choose an opener and solar source that will supply the necessary power to ensure consistent and sufficient operation.

When you use solar power for your entry and exit gate operation, you need to be confident that you will have power accessible at all times. The best way to do that is with a battery bank that will store any excess power. That way, you will have something to fall back on for the cloudy, dreary stretches of weather, too.

In order to build a battery power bank that will be sufficient, you need to know how much power your gate will require on a regular basis. The power consumption of your gate on a per-cycle basis, multiplied by the average number of cycles in a day, tells you how much battery storage you'll need for a single day's use.

Consider the single day's power need and multiply that by however many days of backup power you would like to store. That tells you the battery capacity you need. Your gate installation technician can help you ensure that your battery bank is connected as a backup power source for the gate's opening system.

An automatic gate is a great option for property security without manual intervention. When you want property security without the increased electricity bill, solar-powered gate openers are a viable alternative. Contact us at Northgates In Motion for more information about automatic gate installation.