Hi. Does anyone know if I can buy a CR123 Battery in Alkaline or something other than Lithium? I have an Open / Close sensor outside and with the CR123 Lithium I get about 10 weeks of life as they do not like the cold, yet the same sensors inside I get numerous years.
Lithium are better than alkaline for cold temperatures. If your lithium batteries aren’t lasting, it may be an issue with that particular brand, but switching to non-lithium is not likely to fix it.
Lithium or Alkaline Batteries - Which Do I Need? | Lowe's.
So the first thing is to make sure you’re getting a decent brand. Duracell, energizer, or Panasonic all test well. Avoid no-name batteries or Amazon basics. If you need to save money, Kirkland from Costco generally test very well.
Second, one of the most common reasons why batteries don’t last in outdoor devices is that they’re having a hard time getting signal to the hub and so they’re having to resend messages a bunch of times which runs down the battery. So think about where your repeaters are and how signal is going to get back into the house. Sometimes it helps to put a repeater, often a lightbulb in a table lamp, near a window. Or, of course, have a mains powered repeater outdoors, like an outdoor smart plug.
But I’d be very surprised if the issue was that you were using lithium batteries. 
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I have tested a lot of the battery manufactures, from Panasonic (best) Eveready (Ok), Amazon basics (hmmm) and few others on over 60 sensors, and they all suck in cold temperature. I guess that is why Electric cars have Heat pumps to heat or cool the battery packs. I hacked my Smartthings multi sensor which I use outside too from the CR4050 or whatever it is to 2 x AAA batteries, and now get over 3 years battery life out if it whereas the 4050 I would only get a few months.
I have a cabin that is unheated most of the winter and I have quite a few battery powered sensors.
I get good life out of devices using AAA (alkaline), AA (alkaline), CR2 (lithium), and CR123a (lithium) batteries. These device are ZigBee and Z-wave.
I had problems with short battery life in devices that use lithium coin batteries. One exception is my Ring contact sensors which use 2-CR2032 (lithium) batteries and get good battery life.
You generally can NOT switch battery chemistries due to the voltage differences. Alkaline batteries are 1.5 volt and lithium batteries are 3.0 volts.
What protocol are your outdoor contact sensors? WiFi sensors with a few exceptions eat up batteries.
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