2.

1 General Characteristics of Lead-Acid Batteries

The lead-acid battery has been a successful article of commerce for over a
century. Its production and use continue to grow because of new applications for
battery power in energy storage, emergency power, and electric and hybrid
vehicles (including off-road vehicles) and because of the increased number of
vehicles for which it provides the energy for engine starting, vehicle lighting, and
engine ignition (SLI). This battery system is also used extensively in telephone
systems, power tools, communication devices, emergency lighting systems, and as
the power source for mining and material-handling equipment. The wide use of
the lead-acid battery in many designs, sizes, and system voltages is accounted for
by the low price and the ease of man-ufacture on a local geographic basis of this
battery system.
There have been many improvements in lead-acid battery design and
charger system logic to make high-voltage batteries more uniform in performance.
The lead-acid battery has a high electrical turnaround efficiency, 75 to 80%,
which makes the system attractive for electric-vehicle and energy-storage use.
Traditional vertical-plate batteries are capable of energy densities greater than 40
Wh/kg. Modified lead-acid batteries are being investigated for both electric and
hybrid-drive vehicles. The worlds largest energy-storage battery system was
finished in late 1988. This 40 MWh battery, located in Chino, Calif, uses
individual industrial-size lead-acid cells in series and parallel connection to make
a 10-MW system delivering energy into the utility grid at 2000 V and 8000 A for
4 hours. This battery operated for more than a decade as a demonstration project.
At the other extreme, small individual lead-acid cells and batteries are now
available with quick connects for use in small electric appliances and electronics
applications. Many of these newer applications require low-maintenance or
maintenance-free designs. Thin film capacitor-like lead-acid batteries have
become commercially available in the past few years, for consumer and electronic
applications. These are discussed in detail Some larger industrial cells are often
virtually maintenance-free using the oxygen-recombination principle and a
resealable Bunsen vent. An approach to high-energy-density, high-power-density,
high-cycle-life lead-acid battery design is the bipolar design, a design which is
still being pursued. The problems which prevent this design from larger scale
commercial use relate to the availability of a bipolar material which is
electronically conductive, nonporous to ions, low cost, and stable against both
positive and negative active materials. Conductive plastics, which are used in
some battery systems, have not been suc-cessful in lead batteries. Experiments
have been carried out with a bipole made from tin oxide coated glass encapsulated
in a plastic matrix, and with multilayers of different lead alloys to slow the
penetration of the bipole by corrosion.