Electric Strike and Maglock Power, Inrush, and Standby Budget
Access control power supplies get sized on the doors and then fail on the battery.
Example
You enter
- Number of locking devices 14
- Holding current per device (A) 0.45
- Inrush current per device (A) 1.5
- Standby duration required (h) 24
- Battery derate factor 0.8
- Power supply rating (A) 12
- Installed battery capacity (Ah) 12
You get
- Steady current 6.30 A
- Peak inrush, all devices at once 21.0 A
- Amp hours required 151.2
- Amp hours after derate 189
- Batteries of the installed size required 16
Details, formula, and sources
Because standby is a different problem. Three separate failures hide behind one supply. STEADY CURRENT is the easy one and the one everyone computes: 14 maglocks at 0.45 A holding is 6.3 A, and a 12 A supply covers it comfortably. INRUSH is the second. A strike or magnet energizing draws several times its holding current for a few tens of milliseconds, so those same 14 locks at 1.5 A of inrush momentarily demand 21 A -- and a supply sized on holding current alone sags exactly when every door must release at once on a fire alarm signal. STANDBY is the third and the most commonly wrong. 6.3 A for 24 hours is 151.2 Ah, and derating to 80% for battery age and temperature makes it 189 Ah: sixteen of the 12 Ah batteries that fit in a typical enclosure. That is an external battery cabinet or a shorter standby requirement, and it is a design decision rather than something to discover at commissioning. Sizing a battery to nameplate ignores that a battery at end of life and at low temperature delivers considerably less, which is why the derate exists and why battery replacement is scheduled rather than failure-driven. The quiet fourth failure is voltage drop: a magnet at the end of a long small-gauge run sees less than its rated voltage and holds with less than its rated force, and the symptom reads as a lock problem when it is a wiring problem -- that calculation is the low-voltage DC drop calculator and is not repeated here. A load and standby calculation from device data the user supplies. Device currents, and especially inrush, must come from the manufacturer's specifications; nameplate holding current alone will undersize a supply. It does not address the fire alarm interface requirements, which govern both the standby duration and the manner in which locks must release on alarm and which are life-safety requirements rather than design choices. It does not evaluate egress: electrically locked egress doors are heavily constrained by the building and fire codes, and a lock that fails secure on a door required for egress is a violation regardless of its power budget. The adopted building and fire codes, the device manufacturers' specifications, and the AHJ govern.
steady current = device count x holding current; peak inrush = device count x inrush current; amp-hours = steady current x standby hours; battery required = amp-hours / derate factor.
The standby amp-hour and inrush sizing method by name, with the fire alarm and egress interface requirements named as governing the standby duration and the release behaviour. Device currents, and especially inrush, come from the manufacturer's specifications.
Multiplication on device data the user reads off the manufacturer's specification; no product table is reproduced.
Estimate. AHJ and licensed professional govern.
Field names used by the API: device_count, holding_current_a, inrush_current_a, standby_hours, battery_derate, supply_rating_a, installed_battery_ah, steady_current_a, peak_inrush_a, amp_hours_required, amp_hours_after_derate, batteries_needed
- Inrush is not holding current several times it, briefly, and simultaneously across every door on an alarm releasedevice manufacturer data
- Standby duration is often set by the alarm interface not by the access control system's own needsadopted fire code
- Derate the battery age and low temperature deliver materially less than nameplatebattery manufacturer data