With today’s demands on batteries, our dependence on their performance is essential. Battery maintenance is something people rarely think about ----at least not until forced to when a problem occurs.
Below we will discuss: reasons “Why Batteries Fail”, how to minimize or avoid battery failures, and finally discuss how thru adoption of battery maintenance, you will see a significant financial increase to your bottom line from a reduction in number of batteries purchased and in service related issues from poor battery performance.
Why do Batteries fail?
There are a couple reasons batteries can fail but we will touch on the two major ones.
1. Sulfation
First and foremost over 80% of batteries fail due to sulfation. What is sulfation?
Sulfation: a natural and necessary byproduct to achieve energy transfer. When a battery is giving off energy, sulfur crystals form and attach themselves to the lead plates inside the battery and accumulate there. During standard recharging of the battery a portion of this accumulation is reversed back into liquid but not all. The remaining crystals collect more and more over use and begin having a negative impact on your batteries performance:
- • Inability to discharge power
- • Inability to recharge
- • Shortened battery life
2. Parasitic Draw
Can you remember when batteries were used to only start your car and maybe play the radio or to heat a cigarette lighter?
Not anymore – today’s demands on batteries have quadrupled! With all the new items put into vehicles from car alarms to TV’s to emergency equipment and two-way radio’s, not to mention GPS locators, batteries are expected to handle all these added requirements and not to fail.
Alternators now put out much more electricity to handle these new product demands, but what about when the engine stops and the alternator are not running?
Many of these new products have been found to still draw small amounts of electricity from the battery even after the vehicle is shut down and switches turned off. When this vehicle sits idle for an extended period, this parasitic draw can drain enough energy from the battery to render it useless and unable to restart the vehicle.
Weak and/or unhealthy batteries can cause other parts of the electrical system to be overworked, overheat due to the reduced voltage, and if left unaddressed can cause these other parts within the electrical system to fail. Just replacing batteries and not identifying issues that may have caused the batteries to fail, will only temporarily get things going again.
A Healthy Battery is key to keeping your electrical system operating at peak performance.
How to Address Sulfation
It only makes sense that if over 80% of batteries fail due to sulfation it becomes imperative it be addressed. Pulse Tech has done just that. Pulse Tech developed a specific patented pulsation that they add to A/C chargers and solar chargers that breaks down the accumulation of the sulfur crystals on the lead plates within the battery. This cleaning of these lead plates increases the lead plate’s ability to accept and discharge energy - more energy. Keeping sulfation from forming will Increase the life of a battery up to 3-5 times longer.
Benefits:
- 1) Cut your battery purchase costs in half or more. What do you spend annually on new battery purchases? Cut your budget by 50% or more.
- 2) Save on service calls to jump or replace dead batteries. How often do you have these calls? What does this cost you annually? These calls can be reduced drastically. Another significant savings to your bottom line.
- 3) A healthy battery means that the other components within the electrical system gets the proper voltage and amperage they require to operate efficiently. Improper voltage to these other components increase temperatures, operate more slowly, and can overwork charging components, leading to early replacement and an unscheduled servicing. A healthy battery is KEY, and a healthy battery will save replacement cost of these other components.
Identify Parasitic Draw
Tired of going out to use equipment and the battery is dead? Replace the battery use the equipment then it sits a couple weeks. You go out to use it again and surprise the battery is dead again! The cost of battery replacement, service call, equipment down time, delayed projects all because of this parasitic draw.
Solution: Identify this mysterious parasitic draw. Once it is identified and measured there are products designed to overcome this.
Pulse Tech solar products are one way to do this. Their solar panels are the toughest in the industry. They were specifically designed for the US military and tough enough to survive combat situations. Solar panels collect the suns energy and use it to charge the battery. Pulse tech not only makes the toughest and highly efficient solar panel, but they also add their patented de-sulfation pulse with the charge. Identifying the parasitic draw and determining the proper solar panel from Pulse Tech can solve this issue and show significant savings to your budget and bottom line.
Benefits:
- 1) Eliminate equipment down time and the cost of labor waiting on the equipment.
- 2) Projects are not delayed and stay on schedule.
- 3) Reduction in cost of replacement batteries.
- 4) Reduction in cost of service call to replace or jump start the battery.
Lift Gate Battery Charger
Other items we offer that help effectively charge batteries are our Lift Gate Battery Chargers. One of the biggest problem the lift gate industry has is maintaining battery enough to activate a trucks lift gate throughout its entire daily route. City routes with multiple stops and multiple lift gate cycles produce the biggest challenges. Our Lift Gate Charger from Littelfuse boosts the DC voltage to send more charge into the lift gate battery giving it more cycles per route.
Conclusion
With all the new products that are available that make us more productive and our equipment more efficient, have put much more demand on batteries. Our dependency on stored power to run these products should make us stop and look at how to improve the performance of our batteries. We at Healthy Battery can help. We can analyze customer issues and recommend steps and products that can significantly improve battery performance and greatly reduce battery related expenditures.