The Big Battery Explosion - Batteries Proliferate: Laptop Battery - Battery Charger - UPS Batteries

• Each year an massive number of electronic devices being created, with many needing specialized batteries, perhaps unique (like the PDA battery that is needed for all of the new PDAs).
• An interesting fact. Did you know that the battery industry has been growing at an very rapid rate in recent years. There are an incredible amount batteries in use today, like: the laptop battery, notebook battery, cell phone battery, camcorder battery, and ups batteries.
• There are many types of rechargeable batteries. Some common ones are the lithium battery (lithium ion), the nimh battery, and the nicad batteries require some type of battery charger.
• Uninterruptable Power Supplies (UPS), which provide power to computer systems in blackouts, contain batteries ( APC battery ) which can be replaced. Larger computer installations, like data centers for large corporations, often have huge backup systems that store power in large batteries. In blackout times, the battery power is run through a power inverter which converts the DC electricity from the batteries into AC current, which is what the computers run off of. When power goes out, the emergency light battery will provide the power needed to light emergency exit routes.
• Home and commercial locations that are protected with security systems are powered by an alarm system battery. This is done so that the security system will work, even in a blackout. In homes many, the power is often easily turned off from the outside circuit breaker. If the home were not powered by a battery, the security system would be easily disabled by an intruder.
• Disposable batteries like the alkaline battery and the battery for hearing aids do not need to be recharged and are disposed when depleted. Batteries are hazardous waste and should not be thrown in the trash. If thrown in the trash, they would eventually eventually wind up in our land fills.
• In remote locations, a solar battery charger can be used to charge a battery or battery system. The battery system could then be used to (through an inverter) to provide AC power to the location.
• In boats and RV's, batteries are often kept in a battery box to protect the battery from the elements. A motorcycle battery is generally not kept in a battery box, like the harley davidson battery.
• A jump starter, which is used to start a car with a dead battery, contains sealed lead acid batteries.

Battery Chargers: Is there a big difference in quality from charger to charger?

There is a difference in quality as with most products. But more importantly, there are different levels of sophistications in chargers. You can have a single phase charger that is a timer-type charger (charges for a certain period of time and automatically turns itself off). You can also have a charger that is automatic and fully automated, and it understands what needs to do to get the job done in a fixed amount of time. You can have single phase chargers, where it takes just puts out a constant charging current whether the batteries need it or not. Single phase chargers are simple and would tend to be less expensive. There are multi-staged chargers where it puts out a higher current to do the bulk of the charging. When it reaches close to its 100 percent charging capacity and then it will go on to a float mode which just keeps your batteries at near 100 percent capacity and ready to go. There are highly sophisticated chargers with microprocessors built in that will do all sort of things that will help a battery lasts longer. You've got all kinds of chargers, BMW version chargers, Chevy version of chargers, and Yugo version chargers. There's quite a variety to choose from. For the customers, it's a couple of things. For one, it's a price driven. They might want to make a significant investment in a real sophisticated charger if it's for a piece of equipment that they use all the time. To let's say a huge grocery wholesale distribution center that's running machines 24 hours a day. And they need to recharge their batteries super fast and get them out for the next shift and there's battery watering involve. So you can see there's quite a variety there.

Battery Charger Complexities

Right and again when we get back to the same old thing, somebody calls up and then they know that for example they need a 36 volt charger and 50 amps. Ok well they just go out and search for a 12 volt 50 amp. And then you see there's different chargers. Why is one $1,500 and another is $3,000 This one costs this because it has all these features and gives you all these benefits. That one costs that because that's all it does. That's another reason why people will call us to talk with us. We can go over their needs and how they line up with the features of various chargers. Walking through the options with them helps them make a decision on whether it makes sense for them to buy the very expensive charger with all the sophisticated features, or whether it makes more sense to choose something right in between in the middle that will suit their needs. Or maybe in their specific case a simple and inexpensive charger will meet their needs just fine. Many times it's not the expensive charger that's best for their situation. And we wouldn't try and persuade someone to go with the more expensive unit if they don't need that level of sophistications. We would never get someone to say "oh you've got to go with this one, this is the "cat's meow." We never want to do that. I just would never feel right about that. And I think that's another reason people come back to us. They know that we will lead them down the right path, and that they got good value out of what they purchased from us.

Battery Expert? What makes a Battery Expert?

We've got a lot of people who will call us, engineers and such. Sometimes they are looking for answers on the invention or project that they are working on. For example they want to be able to run a particular piece of equipment for so many years or for so many hours per day and they want to be able to recharge it in such and such a manner. They need recommendations on chemistry, capacity, and battery charger type to have this done in a particular amount of time. So people come to us with their battery and power related problems, and we help them to solve their problems. Many will want to talk about what they need to build a back up battery system for their specific need. They have a certain job that needs to be done and it needs to work for so long before the generator can kick in and do its work as and recharge the back up system. We do a lot of battery math for our clients. It's not complicated math, but it does take a solid understanding of the various products to do confidently. Maybe they need to allocate enough battery power to do the work while they don't have AC power. We will make the calculations to convert their DC power through an inverter to get 110 or 220 VAC to a particular piece of equipment. They want to know how long they will be able to run that equipment for and how many life cycles they can expect to get out of it. I'd say that a battery expert needs to be able to confidently help their customers solve those types of problems.

There are rechargeable and disposable batteries. Most people are familiar with alkaline batteries, which are a popular type of disposable battery. They're an inexpensive form of energy. There are many types of rechargeable battery chemistries. The order of evolution of rechargeable battery chemistries is roughly as follows: first there's nickel cadmium, then nickel metal hydride. In going from nickel cadmium to nickel metal hydride, you have roughly doubled the capacity of the battery without increasing the size or weight.

Nickel metal hydride is now a very common form of rechargeable battery. There's more chemistries out there like polymer batteries. It's still not widely used. It can be recharged fast and it's very, very light (it has a high energy density ratio).

We also have conventional lead acid batteries and they come in many different forms such as batteries for your car, truck, or boat. Lead acid batteries can be broken down into free liquid batteries and sealed batteries. In the free liquid batteries, the battery has an open cell that expels gasses. They may need some maintenance from time to time like adding water or sometimes acid. Free acid batteries are an old technology that has been around for a hundred years or more.

Solar Battery Chargers

We also help people with their solar power/solar panel needs. People will come to us, and they want to put their home on solar. So we help them determine how many panels they need to generate so many watts of power. They know that they need to run a refrigerator, a well, or maybe their whole house on solar. So we calculate their consumption in watts and then provide the appropriate panels that will meet their needs. Many will need to create a battery storage system so they can use electricity at night when there is no sunlight. For the storage systems we are talking about lead acid batteries, in most cases. We could be using nickel cadmium or something else but in most cases it's lead acid batteries are the better and more economical choice. Similar calculations and considerations would need to be done if they wanted to use a generator instead of solar panels. We answer these types of questions quite often.