A study on energy gauge for lead acid battery

• Main Author: Yeo, Patrick Siok Hui.
• Other Authors: Koh, Liang Mong
• Format: Theses and Dissertations
• Published: 2008
• Subjects: DRNTU::Engineering::Electrical and electronic engineering::Electric power::Auxiliaries, applications and electric industries
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/3887
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

The main purpose of the study is to find a more accurate and cost effective way of gauging the remaining capacity of a lead acid battery from its discharge characteristics.There are only a few types of energy gauge available in the market that measure the capacity of the lead acid battery with certain accuracy. The most common and simplest gauge in use today uses the terminal voltage monitoring method. Others use a combination of parameters like voltage, current, temperature and charge/discharge rate monitoring method. Gauges that use both terminal voltage and discharging current have higher accuracy in the nominal range of 15% error as compared to the terminal voltage method, which has an error of 20%. The most accurate one available, that has an attainable accuracy of 95% uses a micro-controller to keep track of temperature, time, current, voltage and charge/discharging rate. To attain such accuracy, the controller needs to adjust the appropriate parameters on a per cycle basis to converge upon a reliable and repeatable estimation.