LOW-MAINTENANCE, VALVE-REGULATED, LEAD-ACID-BATTERIES IN UTILITY APPLICATIONS

Electric power utility companies have various needs for lead/acid batteries, and also are beginning to promote customer-side-of-the meter applications for mutual benefits. Increasing use of lead/acid batteries in the future will depend heavily on improving performance and reliability of sealed, recombination designs, and on their versatility for many applications. Classifying various utility uses could be by cycling requirements, depth-of-discharge, power or energy (ratio of watts to hours), or by site (utility or customer). Deep-cycling examples are energy storage, peak-shaving and electric vehicles. Shallow-cycling examples are frequency regulation and reactive power control. Infrequent discharge examples are stationary service and spinning reserve. (Float service for telecommunications and uninterruptible power sources (UPS) applications are not addressed.) Some present and planned installations of valve-regulated lead/acid batteries are surveyed. Performance characteristics will be discussed, including recent results of testing both gel and absorptive glass mat (AGM) types of deep-cycling batteries. Recommendations for future research and development of valve-regulated cell technology are outlined, based on a recent conference organized by the United States Department of Energy (USDOE) and the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI).