Battery Invasion - Batteries Everywhere: Laptop Battery - Battery Charger - UPS Batteries

Batteries are all over the place, here's some tidbits of trivia:

  • Each year an unbelievable number of new electronic devices being created each year, with many of them needing special batteries (like the PDA battery that is needed for all of the new PDAs).
  • The battery industry has been growing at an incredible 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.
  • For multi-use rechargeable batteries like the lithium battery, the NiMH battery (Nickel Metal Hydride), and the NiCad batteries (Nickel Cadmium)require some type of battery charger. Some battery chargers are included with devices, and some need to be purchased separately.
  • There are batteries which are not chared. These disposable batteries like the alkaline battery and the battery for hearing aids cannot be recharged and so they are disposed when they are 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.
  • Commercial buildings and personal residences that are protected by security systems are often able to be powered by an alarm system battery. The battery power is for backup purposes only. Alarm systems are designed this way so that the security system will opearae, even in blackout conditions whether intentional or not. In many personal residences, the power can often be easily turned off from the outside breaker panel. If a home alarm system were not powered by a battery, the alarm system would be easily disabled by an intruder.

    • Battery Information

    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 l ead 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.

    Battery Industry Change

    I'll just give you one fact that should help illustrate the constant change. The small rechargeable battery industry, whether it's the lithium ion, nickel-cadmium etc. that industry has actually been doubling every year for the last five years worldwide. That's 32 times growth in the last 5 years. You may say "wow" that's a lot. Absolutely it is. Every time a new product comes out in a year, whether it's the Ipod or blackberry, or cell phones a whole new miniature battery industry sprouts up to support the new product. And in recent years many new consumer electronic products come out each year. In my house we've gone from just me having a cell phone to now my wife and every kid in my house has a cell phone. I'm talking out of a wireless phone right now to you and I've got three of those cordless phones in my house. So that's where all the growth is coming from.