I have a PowerTap G3. I ride indoors 5 days a week with my long ride around 2.5 hours. The battery lasts 3 months easy. In the summer when I am riding longer outdoors I get about 2 months out of the battery.
I buy a 3 pack of batteries from Dollarama for $1.25 Canadian. They are Sunbeam lithium CR2032.

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Charity is injurious unless it helps the recipient to become independent of it. John D. Rockefeller Sr.

Make sure they are silver oxide batteries, not alkaline.

Thanks guys :-)

The 2032 I pulled out and the one I replaced it with are lithium.

WD :-)

I had an issue with my G3 a number of years ago when it was brand new, but it was fixed when I did a firmware update. I had the same issues where I changed new batteries within a few weeks. I noticed one day while booting up the Garmin Edge for indoor training that it picked up the G3 sensor while it had been sitting idle on the trainer. It wasn't consistently doing this and over the next few days it would be randomly awake. I suppose it must have been an issue at the time that prompted the firmware update.

I am not sure exactly how many hours I get from the G3 because I split my time between other bikes with power meters. My guess back when I only had the G3 was about 4 months.

You mentioned doing a software update in your first post (firmware update?). If you have done the firmware updates maybe you just had a bad batch of batteries. I have purchased bad batteries twice back to back before.

I have had a G3 for about a year. Ride about 3-6 hours per week consistently.

I have changed the battery twice in that time. Very good life. The old firmware used to drain the battery a bit but that was fixed yonks ago.

I get 3+ months out of mine using Energizer Lithium bought from a drug store.

The first factory battery in mine was dead within 3 months, 2nd one is up to 5 months and counting. Feared the same thing, that I'd be replacing a battery every couple months but seems to be better now.

Thanks guys, as the firmware is up to date I hope this was just a bad battery and I will monitor moving forward.

I do suspect something has gone wrong inside the battery as its voltage was down to 0.7 (from a nominal 3), it shouldn’t really get that low without a constant drain on it and I suspect the electronics in the power cap would shut down way before they would take it down to that level.

It’s a little annoying that the power cap has a green LED inside it to show when it wakes up / has power, but you can only see that when its removed from the hub – it would have been nice to have that visible when it was on the bike to help with quick problem solving / flat battery diagnosis.

Does the hub broadcast battery condition within its signal ? I know my polar strap does and it’s quite useful as it gives you lots of warning of when a battery change is required.

WD :-)

I had problems with my G3 hub. The battery would only last a couple of hours. I updated all software but that didn't help. In the end the cap was replaced under warranty and I've had months out of the last battery I fitted. HTH

Yes it does because I get the low battery warning on my Garmin Edge 520 when it's almost time to replace the battery.

i get somewhere between 4-5k miles out of a battery, usually just replace all my batteries about this time of year in all my powertap hubs

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Brian Stover USAT LII
Accelerate3 Coaching
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