Date
12/10/2014
PDF
Delta-Q Technologies, a leader in battery charging solutions for electric drive vehicles and industrial machines, today revealed new insights into its tailored approach to charging lead acid batteries in machines such as golf cars, lift trucks, aerial work platforms and floor cleaning machines. The company's new white paper, “Achieving 'Charge Quality' for Lead Acid Batteries in Industrial Motive Applications,” describes Delta-Q's approach to maximizing battery performance and longevity. This approach to designing charge profiles for flooded and sealed lead acid batteries bridges the charging concerns of original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), battery manufacturers and end users.
“As electric drive machines become increasingly ubiquitous, our goal is to remove pain points around charging performance and improve users’ experience of these technologies,” said Lloyd Gomm, vice president of business development at Delta-Q Technologies. “Our method of tailoring battery charge profiles requires significant time and resources. Through our expertise, we can address the collective needs of machine OEMs, battery manufacturers and end users, resulting in a more effective, efficient product.”
Charge logic is embedded within a charge profile: the set of instructions guiding the charger in returning energy to the batteries. Each of the major types of lead acid batteries—flooded lead acid (FLA), absorbed glass mat (AGM) and gel—have differing requirements due to their construction and chemistry.
Delta-Q focuses on achieving “charge quality” by designing profiles to achieve performance metrics such as machine runtime, charge time, energy usage, water usage and battery compatibility. The white paper provides two detailed examples to show how these metrics are achieved to varying degrees based on requirements of the application.
Delta-Q’s dedicated approach involves a number of factors and considerations that set it apart, including its collaboration with battery manufacturers to create profiles for specific models and rigorous validation and testing procedures. Through this careful process, Delta-Q can create extremely precise and often reactive battery charging programs that optimize performance and reduce warranty costs for manufacturers. This in turn boosts productivity for end users, enabling machines to run longer and more effectively before requiring recharging.
Delta-Q has commercialized more than 50 charge profiles and provided more than 1.2 million battery chargers for industrial motive applications.
In addition to outlining Delta-Q’s unique procedure for developing battery charge profiles, the white paper also includes an infographic providing foundational information on lead acid batteries, tips for maintaining battery health and the three stages of a typical charging profile.
