Electric Fence Chargers, cont’d.
AC-powered Electric Fence Chargers: All other things being equal, AC-powered chargers are the best chargers to buy. They are cheaper than most comparable battery-powered chargers, even without considering the $50 to $70 expense of buying a 6-volt or 12-volt battery. They are much less expensive than comparable solar-powered chargers. You don’t have to fool with any battery. And you can get a charger of practically any power (joule rating) that you want, while battery-powered and solar-powered chargers rarely exceed 3 joules because more joules draw down the battery more quickly or tend to exceed the recharging abilities of the solar panel.
If you get an AC charger, plan on installing it within a few feet of the AC outlet closest to the electric fence. There’s rarely any problem connecting the charger to the fence, because in contrast to house current the charger’s output is not dangerous. So it doesn’t have to go 3 feet underground like house current. Instead, it can be carried in an insulated wire run along the ground or put an inch or so underground to keep it away from feet and lawnmowers. (If there will be heavy traffic overhead, it is a good idea to run it through a well-drained pipe.) An ordinary insulated electric wire won’t work because there are too many volts (remember, volts are like pressure and will escape), but special undergate and hookup wire made to contain at least 20,000 volts will do the job and is reasonably inexpensive (a 50-foot length costs about $12.00). If you need to install an AC charger outside, remember to provide some sort of shelter protecting it from rain and snow–because even though most charger cases are weather-hardy (Parmak guarantees its charger cases against rust), the internal workings of a charger are generally not designed to cope with water inside the case.
Battery-powered Electric Fence Chargers: Battery-powered chargers should be used where a fence is truly portable and might be taken to places where there is no AC outlet; or where a semi-permanent or permanent fence is out of range of an AC outlet; where one’s budget or climate won’t support a solar-powered charger and one is willing to periodically exchange and recharge batteries. Some of the low-powered battery-powered chargers are extremely versatile, both the Zareba Yellow Jacket (product 01-23) and the Dare Sentry DS 140/DSX 140 (products 01-26 and 01-26A) being able to use 4 D cells (flashlight batteries), a 6-volt battery, or a 12-volt battery. In addition, all of thee chargers come ready to clamp right onto a ground rod, eliminating some of the hassle of grounding a portable system.
Other more powerful battery-powered chargers (see products 01-08, 01-09, 01-27, and 01-28) usually take only a 6-volt or a 12-volt battery, but it should be noted that they can use gel-type as well as the more common car-type or marine-type batteries. This point can be important for keeping the electric fence operating in winter, because gel batteries (see products 01-17 and 01-32) tend to scorn cold weather and work fine right up into Alaska, whereas car and marine-type batteries do not. If cold is not a factor, it is important to note that boat or golf cart batteries power electric fences better and last longer than car-type batteries, even though they cost about the same. The reason is this: car-type batteries are designed to be drawn down (discharged) only slightly before they are recharged. So drawing them down a long way may harm them, and doing it several times is likely to destroy them. In contrast, boat or golf cart batteries can be drawn down a long way without damage, and since the electric fence operator doesn’t want to be recharging batteries every few days, the boat or golf cart battery is the right kind of battery to get. (Such batteries are available on the internet from sites such as www.ebatteriestogo.com).
Solar-powered Electric Fence Chargers: These chargers make up for their budget-busting properties in convenience and reliability, by removing the periodic need to remember, exchange, and recharge batteries, and by ending the fence failures that result from not doing one or another of these things. The reason they are expensive is that they have not one but three elements: The solar panel that generates power and stores it in a battery; the battery that powers the charger; and the charger that activates the fence. These elements can be effectively combined at any level of output–anywhere from the little Fi-Shock SS-440 (product 01-12) with a quarter of a stored joule to Parmak’s hefty 3-joule Solar Pak 12 (product 01-29). In between in our listings comes the 1.4 joule Solar Pak 6 (product 01-15) that does a good job powering short and medium-length horse fences and that has enough reserve battery power to keep the fence operating for up to 21 days in total darkness. None of this should give one the idea that it’s all right to start the solar charger working and leave the fence alone for a long time–because a lot of things (weeds, falling branches, failed connections) can come along to ground out and neutralize the fence; and so, while the solar powered charger is certainly convenient and improves the fence’s reliability vis-a-vis the battery-powered charger, it is no substitute for proper maintenance.
