By Isidor Buchmann
Battery diagnostics is seldom recognized for its contribution to system reliability. Batteries are new only once; their performance begins to decline with use and age. Battery performance assessment should follow the principles of reliability-centered maintenance (RCM), an approach used to maintain the integrity and reliability of equipment. The following examples illustrate why battery diagnostics deserves a place in that process.
Defense
At a conference in Toronto, a U.S. Army official illustrated the need for better battery care with a cartoon of a soldier carrying rocks instead of batteries. At another event in Las Vegas, a military official described batteries used during the Iraq War as so unreliable that personnel had to check them with a voltmeter to identify usable ones.
Poor battery-management logistics can contribute to these problems. The Cadex Battery Ecosystem uses diagnostic chargers or electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) technology to assess capacity with little user intervention. Some European armies assign batteries to individual soldiers as personal equipment and use Cadex battery analyzers to check performance.
The inertial navigation unit (INU) battery in an F-16 aircraft serves as backup power. During a visit to Lockheed Martin, I learned that the INU batteries had exceeded their shelf life during the Yugoslavian war and that no new supply was available. I recall being told that the U.S. Air Force had planned to ground all F-16s after an aircraft reportedly crashed into a mountain because of a faulty INU battery. The crash attribution remains a personal recollection; no accident-investigation report has been identified to substantiate it.
Cadex helped by supplying battery analyzers. Their proprietary reconditioning program restored most of the batteries tested, helping keep the F-16s flying. Cadex analyzers are used to assess INU batteries and can also service other aircraft batteries. Cadex's published military account describes discussion of grounding the aircraft and testing stored INU batteries beyond their specified shelf life.
A soldier carrying rocks instead of usable batteries illustrates the burden of unreliable battery performance. Illustration: Cadex.
F-16 aircraft. Its inertial navigation unit uses a battery for backup power.
Healthcare
Advances in Cadex battery care led to an all-expenses-paid invitation from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to a two-day seminar at its Maryland headquarters. Discussions addressed battery management, equipment readiness, and manufacturers' responsibility for reliable battery performance. The FDA also held its public Battery-Powered Medical Devices Workshop on July 30–31, 2013, to address these challenges. [1]
Cadex's healthcare brochure cites an FDA survey reporting that up to 50% of service calls in the hospitals surveyed involved battery issues. This figure is reported here as Cadex's account of the survey; the original survey has not been identified. [2]
AAMI provides a separate, documented measure of the problem. Martha Vockley's 2014 article, “All Charged Up: The Many Challenges of Battery Maintenance,” reports that battery management ranked among the top 10 medical-device challenges in AAMI surveys of healthcare technology management professionals in 2011, 2012, and 2013. In the 2013 survey, 50% of respondents identified battery management as a challenge. [3]
Out of an abundance of caution, batteries in healthcare may be replaced before their usable service life is over. In my July 2013 article “Giving Batteries a Second Life,” I reported an estimate attributed to Dr. Imre Gyuk, then manager of DOE's Energy Storage Research Program: roughly one million usable lithium-ion batteries were sent for recycling annually, with most retaining up to 80% capacity. This historical estimate illustrates the concern about premature replacement; it is not a current count. [4]
These reports underscore the need for better battery diagnostics, but they do not establish that half of all systems fail because of deficient diagnostics. Battery-related service calls, survey respondents' concerns, and system failures are different measures. Effective diagnostics can help distinguish batteries that need replacement from those that still meet the equipment's requirements.
References
Mission Readiness
Modern maintenance systems store service histories locally or in the cloud to help verify mission readiness before equipment is released for use. These records can cover portable devices, vehicles, aircraft, and machinery. A user enters an equipment ID to view its service history and status: passed, awaiting service, or out of service and unavailable for release.
Batteries are often excluded from these systems because effective diagnostics are lacking. Cadex has developed solutions to service conventional and smart batteries, as well as EIS technology that compares the electrochemical response of larger batteries against a reference matrix to estimate capacity, a key indicator of battery health. Matrices for lead- and lithium-based batteries are available through Cloud Analytics, a repository that also stores battery test data for sharing with fleet supervisors.
Conclusion
A battery is a vital system component, yet it is often installed and forgotten. As the battery ages and capacity declines, the minimum operational reserve energy (MORE) needed for the application deserves continued attention.
Warren Buffett's familiar observation offers a useful analogy: “Only when the tide goes out do you discover who's been swimming naked.”
Warren Buffett's observation illustrates how hidden weaknesses can emerge under demanding conditions.
A battery's declining capacity may remain unnoticed until the system needs more energy than it can deliver. Making battery performance visible helps operators use each pack's service life more fully and identify when replacement is needed. This can improve system reliability, reduce total cost of ownership, and reduce waste by keeping suitable batteries in service longer.
Last Updated: 12-Nov-2026
Batteries In A Portable World
The material on Battery University is based on the indispensable new 4th edition of "Batteries in a Portable World - A Handbook on Rechargeable Batteries for Non-Engineers" which is available for order through Amazon.com.