Titanium vs Duracell CR2 for very low drain?

The marked superiority of Duracell lithium primaries to cheaper brands for higher-current applications seems well documented. I'm wondering how the types compare for very low drain use with occasional higher-drain spikes?

The cells are to be used in Intermatic timers that rely on the CR2 to maintain the memory as well as operate the latching relay to switch the load, so that the timer is independent of the line being switched. The cells provided with the product are no-name and last only about a year with one on-off switching cycle per day.

Does anyone have experience with these batteries used in this or similar application?

Thanks!

I have an intermatic wall-switch timer that runs on one AA. After having it for 5+ years I've settled on running it on L91's. It seems to get hung up from time to time operating on alks, they sometimes can not supply the pulse load needed. It is still using the same first L91 I put in there two years ago.

EDIT: I wasn't aware that any of these ran on CR2's, wierd.

You have the older model of the same unit. You're right, they do tend to hang. Unfortunately they also 'go bad'. In my case every single one of approximately 10 I installed eventually failed, with none lasting longer than about 3 years and most only 1 to 2 years. This model had a proprietary-design switching mechanism that was incorporated into the unit's housing. Even installing the switch with flexure or torsion in the mounting yoke was often enough to cause faulty switching. Even with careful installation, or even no installation at all, they all eventually died due to switch failure.

Thankfully, Intermatic finally (took them WAY too long!) wised up and redesigned the timer. It now uses an off-the-shelf relay to do the switching. This change necessitated a higher-voltage power supply, hence the use of CR2 in the new model. Importantly, I have not had a single unit fail since the redesign! That's good, because I would have written Intermatic off entirely otherwise. :sick2:

Maybe the impact therapy I administered to the switch when it locked up s few times somehow realigned the flux capacitor and is giving me some extra life

The new ones also adjust for time of year I think right? this is a PITA to adjust every month or two.

I did try impact therapy, but apparently didn't use the right protocol!

Yes the new ones do adjust astronomically. You just reminded me that the newest older ones did as well. That was an intermediate design with the old switch style. Those ones were also susceptible to the switch freeze-up problem (AKA "NO OP"). For some reason Intermatic decided if an AA was a good power source, an AAA would be even better! Yay! The battery now lasted less than half as long, whoopie! :mecry: (I think that design change had something to do with the physical integrity of the battery holder tray, lol)

So far i'm not terribly impressed with the CR2 longevity versus the AA model, but that may be due to the cheap, no-name cell the timers come with, hence my question. :thinking:

lyyyghtmaster said:

The marked superiority of Duracell lithium primaries to cheaper brands for higher-current applications seems well documented. I'm wondering how the types compare for very low drain use with occasional higher-drain spikes?

The cells are to be used in Intermatic timers that rely on the CR2 to maintain the memory as well as operate the latching relay to switch the load, so that the timer is independent of the line being switched. The cells provided with the product are no-name and last only about a year with one on-off switching cycle per day.

Does anyone have experience with these batteries used in this or similar application?

Thanks!

Click to expand...

Hello,

I experienced a problem while low-draining a Duracell CR2 battery. I am using one of those in my project and the discharge pattern is the one you described : "very low drain use with occasional higher-drain spikes". I found out that after a partial discharge (70%) if any spikes is applied to the battery, the CR2 battery died sooner than expected!
Did you ever experience this behaviour?

Thanks