BU-918: Battery Endurance Plan

A dog owner must always have enough dog food on hand. When reserves get low, pressing the Amazon button fetches a new bag to keep the dog happy.

If this simplicity is possible with dog food, replacing faded batteries in industry requires equal ease and attention.

A new generation of charger is available that checks the capacity of a smart battery with calls for service or replacement when the Minimum Operational Reserve Energy (MORE) can no longer be met. The MORE levels in the charger are adjustable to get a ‘sweet-spot’ between reliability and economics, a feature made possible with the Target Selector. The Universal Supervisor Charger (USC) by Cadex offers these features in standalone mode and by connecting to a host that enables Cloud Analytics.

When inserting a smart battery into the USC, the charger validates the available capacity with a green SoH Light as shown as in Figure 2; amber calls for calibration or replacement. Battery performance is evaluated by reading the Leftover Charge before charge. An analogy is an aircraft carrying enough fuel for a safe landing. Low Leftover Charge indicates capacity fade with need to calibrate of replace.

Leftover Charger at the end of a day should be 10–20%. Increasing the target adds more capacity; plenty of reserve permits lower settings to keep a battery in service longer. This feature enables full use of each battery with call for replacement before failure.

Connecting the USC to a host forms the Battery Endurance Plan (BE- Plan) as shown in Figure 3. The charger serves as ‘Amazon button’ to identify batteries in need of replacement, carried out by automated supply chain functions.

One of the special features is checking the smart battery at user-level on the charger. A lit green gives a pass, but an orange SoH Light calls for the calibration of the battery, done in the charger or by placing the pack in the Service Box for service in a battery analyzer. Packs that recover are returned; failing packs are replaced or assigned to lower duties.

Cloud Analytics displays fleet batteries as illustrated in Figure 5 revealing Leftover Charge, Energy Consumed and the Remaining Useful Life (RUL) in years. The Target Capacity setting plays a critical role in the life expectancy of a battery, information that is essential for risk management.