How to Keep the Lights On While Off the Grid
Modern life depends on batteries. From mobile phones to vaporizers, just every electronic device people carry in their daily life requires a battery to provide its energy.
How Do Rechargeable Batteries Work?
All rechargeable batteries depend on chemistry. They are secondary cells and rely on reversible chemical reactions to produce power. When you put them on the charger the reaction stores energy, when you put them in the device it triggers the reverse reaction and releases energy in the form of electric current. While there are several different kinds of battery technology including NiMH and NiCd, the most common technology in modern applications is lithium-based. Lithium-ion batteries offer a wide range of capabilities that make them great for electronic devices:
- Density: A lithium-ion battery packs a lot of energy into a small package, making them very useful for high current devices.
- Memory: Lithium-ion batteries don't suffer from a memory effect, so they can continue to provide power through multiple charging cycles whether you discharge them fully or only partially.
- Charging: Lithium ion chemistry allows for rapid charging so that you can quickly achieve almost a full charge on your device without worrying about causing issues with the battery life.
- Current: Lithium-ion battery technology works at 3.7 Volts, which provides more power than its 1.2 Volt competitors.
What Can Lithium Batteries Do?
There is hardly anything any battery can do that a lithium-ion battery can't enable. About the only thing that non-rechargeable batteries are better for is long duration low power duties like powering a remote where the self-discharge of a rechargeable battery might get in the way. Companies like LG Chem provide a wide range of rechargeable battery solutions for such applications as:
- Storage: Batteries are an excellent option for off-grid power supplies. When you combine them with solar panels, they let you focus on self-generation when the power is available, while still allowing the same off-peak flexibility as grid-tied systems. Large installations may be floor-standing or even wall-mounted; enabling you to keep going even during a blackout.
- Cars: Most electric vehicles rely on Lithium-ion solutions for their battery packs. They can pick up miles of range with just a short period of time on the charger, and the high energy density makes Li-ion packs easy to fit in a car without compromising performance or handling.
- Portable Devices: Most portable devices for daily use rely on battery power, and it's more efficient to design the device with a built-in battery than it is to force people to spend time looking for replacement batteries every time they run out.
Batteries Today and Tomorrow
With technologies like lithium-ion and li-polymer, modern LG batteries are thriving in high-power applications where older technologies like nickel-based or lead-acid batteries could never home to compete. That's not to say that the technology is perfect, but performance enhancement steadily erodes its tradeoffs.
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