Lead-acid batteries have served as the warehouse workhorses for decades, but monitoring the many factors that affect their health in real-time continues to provide benefits to the bottom line. Prevention beats correction every time, especially when it comes to avoiding permanent damage. Are you monitoring the three main factors that can affect your battery's performance?

There are three key areas to monitor in a lead acid battery: electrolyte, temperature and charge. Whilst there are many offline indicators available to alert you of when danger thresholds are crossed, it often means someone on the shopfloor needs to be trained and actively checking when these alerts trigger.

Why Electrolyte Levels Matter

Let’s start by looking at battery electrolyte levels. Knowing the electrolyte level of the battery means being prepared to increase the electrolyte prior to sulfation and the damage that accompanies it. Fire risk is also greater when the electrolyte level is low. This is a clear case of prevention producing the most savings.

How Temperature Affects Performance

Understanding how temperature affects the battery’s health is also crucial. A battery can survive in a fairly cold environment, but even the electrolyte can freeze. The goal would always be to know the temperature is getting too low before the water in it freezes and expands, causing irreparable cell and casing damage. The battery’s capacity would be permanently reduced. The cold also slows down the charging and discharging rate, affecting the smooth running of the warehouse. It is even possible for sulfation to occur in cold temperatures. 

There is even more at risk to battery lifespan and performance at high temperatures.Adverse chemical reactions increase as temperature increases, leading to higher self-discharge rates and corrosion to the plates. The resulting sulfation reduces the battery’s ability to hold a charge, and worse yet may be irreversible. As the temperature rises, its lifespan decreases, and capacity can become permanently reduced. Beyond the loss of a valuable asset, fire risk increases due to the possibility of thermal runaway if the battery heats up too quickly. There is no reason to not monitor the temperature in real-time.

How This Affects the Overall Usage Profile

The cumulative effect of having real-time data for multiple factors is clear when looking at both temperature and charge cycles. The forklift battery with a very cold temperature from the example above may also be in a low state of charge, which means it will freeze at a higher temperature than a fully charged battery. The shortcuts and overlooked steps in charging, using and discharging a battery can also lead to several bad outcomes. Preventing a deep discharge (under a 20% charge) is always preferable. On the other side, overuse of opportunity charging (charging too frequently) could also damage these valuable assets, causing possible overheating and cell damage.

To enable a proactive approach to performance monitoring, battery owners should:

• Use predictive maintenance tools to maximise uptime.
• Leverage fleet intelligence platforms like the eGO! to take battery performance metrics and alerts from offline to an online, remotely accessible platform.
• Build this approach into every aspect of battery fleet monitoring.

Luckily this is all possible, easy, and available now, with the eGO! range of battery performance monitors.

Imagine all the factors that can predict and prevent problems are available, on-demand and in real-time, and from anywhere. The relevant information is from an online secure data portal, available from every location with seamless data uploads. The answers have been provided, and preventive action can now be taken to save your valuable assets before anything happens to them.

Learn more about the eGO! battery performance monitors at: https://www.phlsci.com/product-lines/battery-performance-monitors/