Setting Battery Performance Standards

A battery is a corrosive device that begins to fade the moment it comes off the assembly line.  The stubborn behavior of batteries has left many users in awkward situations. The British Army could have lost the Falklands War in 1982 on account of uncooperative batteries. The officers assumed that a battery would always follow the rigid dictate of the military. Not so. When a key order was given to launch the British missiles, nothing happened. No missiles flew that day. Such battery-induced letdowns are common; some are simply a nuisance and others have serious consequences.

Even with the best of care, a battery only lives for a defined number of years. There is no distinct life span, and the health of a battery rests on its genetic makeup, environmental conditions and user patterns.

Lead acid reaches the end of life when the active material has been consumed on the positive grids; nickel-based batteries lose performance as a result of corrosion; and lithium-ion fades when the transfer of ions slows down for degenerative reasons. Only the supercapacitor achieves a virtually unlimited number of cycles, if this device can be called a battery, but it also has a defined life span.

Battery manufacturers are aware of performance loss over time, but there is a disconnect when educating buyers about the fading effect. Runtimes are always estimated with a perfect battery delivering 100 percent capacity, a condition that only applies when the battery is new.While a dropped phone call on a consumer product because of a weak battery may only inconvenience the cellular user, an unexpected power loss on a medical, military or emergency device can be more devastating.

Consumers have learned to take the advertised battery runtimes in stride. The information means little and there is no enforcement. Perhaps no other specification is as loosely given as that of battery performance. The manufacturers know this and get away with minimal accountability. Very seldom does a user challenge the battery manufacturer for failing to deliver the specified battery performance, even when human lives are at stake. Less critical failures have been debated in court and punished in a harsh way.

The battery is an elusive scapegoat; it’s as if it holds special immunity. Should the battery quit during a critical mission, then this is a situation that was beyond control and could not be prevented. It was an act of God and the fingers point in other directions to assign the blame. Even auditors of quality-control systems shy away from the battery and consider only the physical appearance; state-of-function appears less important to them.