Battery Knowledge — the Microtex engineering library
One hundred and thirty-five working guides written by the people who build the batteries — charging discipline, chemistry without mystery, honest comparisons, the failure knowledge most makers keep to themselves, and the battery questions the world is asking right now. Every claim traces to a named source or a test report.
The pillar guideLead-Acid Battery: The Complete Guide165 years of chemistry, construction and honest engineering — the library’s foundation stone.
The honest scorecardBattery Chemistries ComparedThere is no best battery — only the best battery for a duty. The table done honestly.JULY 2026 · REFRESHED TWICE YEARLYWill Lithium Kill Lead-Acid? The 10-Year OutlookThe convention-hall debate settled with sourced numbers — brutal where the numbers are brutal. Not dying; being outgrown.Battery Charging, Done Right
Why universal voltage numbers are a lie, and what governs instead.
ChargingBattery Chargers Explained
Push, ease, hold — the machine that decides your battery’s life.
ChargingChoosing a Forklift Battery Charger
Cells, ampere-hours and the clock — the three numbers, three-battery rotation, and the middle-band rule for opportunity charging.
ChargingCharging at High Current
A battery can only drink so fast — the ampere-hour law, and where the excess amperes really go.
ChargingFloat Charging
Keeping a full battery full for twenty years without cooking it.
ChargingTrickle vs Float
Same shop shelf, opposite philosophies — one of them ages your battery.
ChargingHow Long on Float?
Indefinitely — by design. The two conditions, and the three clocks float cannot stop.
CareStoring Batteries in Stock
The shelf is not neutral: self-discharge, refresh charging, and the storeroom rules that protect your stock.
ChargingThe Equalising Charge
Maintenance’s most misunderstood ritual — a deliberate, controlled overcharge.
ChargingCharge Factor & Efficiency
Why you always put back more than you took out — and what the gap costs.
ChargingEqualisation Chargers
The machine behind the ritual — and why capability is never permission.
ChargingAC Ripple, Decoded
The wobble a voltmeter averages away — heat, corrosion, runaway, and the 2 % limit two institutions agree on.
ChargingCharging in Cold Weather
Temperature compensation: why the right voltage moves with the thermometer.
CareState of Charge
Reading how full a battery really is — and the rest rules that make readings true.
CareBattery Water
The cheapest ingredient that ruins the most batteries.
CareFirst Fill & First Charge
A battery’s first drink decides much of its life.
CareStoring Batteries
Charge first, store cool, refresh on schedule — the anti-sulfation drill.
CareThe Maintenance Walk-Round
Glance monthly, sample quarterly, audit yearly — and keep the log.
CareTerminal Corrosion
The fuzz decoded, the micro-ohm doctrine, and the cleaning drill in the right order.
CareVRLA Battery Maintenance
Sealed removes two rituals — and keeps everything else.
ChargingOpportunity Charging a Forklift Battery
Plugging in at breaks can save a spare battery or wear out the one you have — what two reference books say.
ChargingWhy a Battery Gets Hot on Charge
Three sources of heat in a charging battery, and which one is a fault.
CareVent Plugs and Valves
Gas out, acid back, sparks kept away: what vent plugs and valves do.
Flat Plate vs Tubular
The single most important line on any datasheet: the plate construction.
CompareAGM vs Gel
Two sealed batteries, two different personalities.
CompareTubular Gel vs Flooded
Visibility and correction versus freedom from watering.
TypesWhat Is a VRLA Battery?
The oxygen cycle that ended topping-up — and its price.
TypesWhat Is an OPzV Battery?
The gel tubular cell: DIN letters decoded, duty explained.
TypesThe Planté Battery
The 1860 original, honestly retired — and how to answer a tender that still names it.
TypesThe EFB Battery
How the enhanced flooded battery beat the start-stop problem.
TypesSemi-Traction Batteries
A trade word, not a standard — how to read the construction instead.
Types2 V Cells or Monobloc?
Same chemistry, one box or many — heat in the middle cell, one-cell replacement, and four questions that decide.
BuyingChoosing a Manufacturer
Six insider questions that sort any battery factory — including us.
ChemistriesLithium-Ion, Honestly
A rival chemistry described fairly — strengths, limits, Nobel and all.
ChemistriesNickel-Metal Hydride
Hydrogen stored in metal — the hybrid era’s quiet professional.
ChemistriesSolid-State Batteries
The most promised battery in the world: physics real, engineering hard.
CompareLead-Acid: The Honest Ledger
Strengths and weaknesses with nothing airbrushed.
ChoosingLithium for Diesel Loco Starting?
The cranking second, honestly examined — why drop-in lithium fails this duty.
BuyingBattery Standards Decoded
What IS 1651 and IEC 60896 actually fix — and what they deliberately leave open.
BuyingWriting a Battery Spec
Six clauses that make price competition happen on quality’s terms.
BuyingReading a Datasheet
Rate, end voltage, temperature — the conditions beside every number, and design life versus service life.
BuyingReading a Warranty
Design life, service life and warranty are three different things — the conditions that void it and the file that wins a claim.
BuyingSizing the Connector
The voltage-drop arithmetic and the copper-versus-aluminium joint most buyers skip.
BuyingThe Spare Battery Ratio
The 8-8-8 rule of thumb, and sizing a battery fleet properly instead of guessing.
CompareNickel-Cadmium or Lead-Acid?
Where nickel-cadmium genuinely wins for a station battery — and where it does not — from a lead-acid maker.
CompareLithium or Lead-Acid Forklifts?
Six questions on shifts, charging room, weight and cost — and where each honestly wins.
CompareOPzS, Planté or Ni-Cd?
The station battery’s three constructions — armoured tubular, 1860 pure lead, pocket-plate alkaline — compared for nuclear and substation duty.
ChoosingOrdering a Replacement Forklift Battery
Seven things to read off the truck and the old battery before you ask for a quotation.
ChoosingDry-Charged Batteries
Charged, with the acid taken out: why it travels well and what the receiver must do.
ChoosingContainer and Lid Materials
SAN, ABS or polypropylene: what the container is made of, and how it behaves.
ChoosingDry-Charged or Moist-Charged?
Two ways to ship a battery without acid, and what “charged and dry” really asks for.
The Chemical Reactions
What actually happens inside — from the one-line version down.
ScienceThe Acid
Electrolyte, fuel gauge and reactant — sulphuric acid’s double life.
ScienceThe pH of Battery Acid
Below 1 — and why that is the last honest number. The working gauge is density.
ScienceThe Separator
The component nobody specifies — and one of the two or three that decide battery life.
ScienceWhere 2 Volts Comes From
Thermodynamics signs the certificate — and builds a fraud detector.
ScienceBattery Formation
The first charge of a battery’s life — and the most careful.
ScienceWhat Is C-Rate?
Capacity is a number with conditions attached.
SciencePeukert’s Law
Why batteries give less when you ask faster — told with one runner.
ScienceCycle Life vs Depth of Discharge
A cycle count without a stated depth is decoration — how DoD decides real life.
ScienceArrhenius’ Theory
Why heat ages batteries and cold slows them — heat is a loan.
ScienceInternal Resistance
The quiet number that predicts sag, heat and the dying cell.
ScienceSeries & Parallel
The string rules — and the five samenesses that keep banks alive.
EngineeringBattery Sizing
The five-step chain from true load to honest ampere-hours.
SciencePositive Grid Corrosion
The failure mode nobody watches — two-layer corrosion, twenty-one per cent growth, and why it ends most batteries.
ScienceConstant-Power Discharge
A UPS draws watts, not amps: why the discharge mode changes the answer.
Traction Batteries
The deep-cycle workhorse of forklifts and warehouses.
ApplicationsTraction Battery Service & Repair
Twenty-four cells in a steel box, and usually one has failed — what can be fixed, and when the honest answer is a new battery.
ApplicationsForklifts in Cold Stores
Minus eighteen never lets up — the physics and the four disciplines of freezer duty.
ApplicationsAGV & AMR Batteries
Contact-charged round the clock? Buy lithium. Swap rooms and single shifts still suit lead-acid — plus a one-minute test.
ApplicationsGolf Cart Batteries
Deep cycle, not SLI — the buyer’s guide to leisure power.
ApplicationsElectric Vehicles
A century-old comeback story, told honestly by a battery maker.
ApplicationsUnderground Mining Batteries
Arc, tracking, gassing — what the hardest duty on earth demands.
ApplicationsCharging Underground
The station below: ventilation first, air to the return, and the swap rhythm of a mine fleet.
ApplicationsMining Battery Chargers
Batteries die in charging bays — the matched, profile-controlled charger with auditable Ah and time logs.
ApplicationsDiesel vs Battery Underground
What diesel exhaust does in a coal heading, and what it costs in ventilation — every claim linked to IARC, NIOSH and the rule book.
ApplicationsBattery Fires Underground: The Record
Eleven lithium BEV fires, no deaths, causes in charging bays and storage — and the lead-acid record, Scotia and Brookwood included. What both share.
ApplicationsSolar Battery Storage
Solar’s polite demands are lead-acid’s hardest test. Design for it.
ApplicationsNuclear Plant Batteries
Standby power where failure is not a word — qualification and proof.
InfrastructureThe Substation Duty Cycle
Years of silence, one violent minute — the drawing, the voltage window and sizing for the last year.
InfrastructureBattery Room Design
The four duties a room owes its battery for twenty years.
InfrastructureThe Acid-Proof Formation Floor
Granite, poured-lead joints, welded polypropylene — an idea from a temple, free to copy.
LogisticsShipping Batteries
UN classes, container discipline, and the wet-vs-dry decision.
LogisticsDangerous Goods & the Rules
UN 2794, UN 2800 or out of scope — and the four rulebooks that reach a battery store.
ApplicationsRailway Batteries
The electrified railway’s hidden DC backbone, duty by duty.
ApplicationsTelecom Tower Batteries
The −48 V heartbeat of a network that never sleeps.
EngineeringSizing a Station Charger
Float load plus recharge — the one-line equation, worked through, and why each charger carries the full load.
ApplicationsMine Locomotive Battery Sizing
The eight things a locomotive battery is sized from, and the coal-dust trap on the cell tops.
How Batteries Actually Die
The five killers — and how discipline buys years against each.
TestingHow to Test a Battery
The hierarchy of evidence, ending at the only proof.
TestingStationary Battery Monitoring
A monitor watches, a BMS controls — what to measure, how to read trends, and the three things no monitor replaces.
PracticeBattery Commissioning
From crate to duty without losing a year — the whole checklist.
TestingFailure Analysis
The post-mortem method, published — the witness never lies.
TestingSeismic Qualification
OBE, SSE and the shake-table proof — how a battery earns an earthquake rating.
PracticeDC Earth Faults
Why the battery room is the usual suspect — and how the hunt actually goes.
LifeBattery Sulfation
The preventable death: how it starts, hardens, and is avoided.
LifeAcid Stratification
The hidden gradient that lies to hydrometers and wears plates unevenly.
TestingSpecific Gravity
The flooded battery’s most honest gauge — how to read it, and the three moments it lies.
TestingBattery Specific Gravity Chart
The reference line with its conditions kept on, the 0.0007 per °C correction, the six-cell rule — and how to draw your own.
SafetyWhy Batteries Explode
Hydrogen’s arithmetic — and the habits that keep it boring.
SafetyBattery-Room Hydrogen
An end-of-charge event, not a constant emission — the timetable, the standard, the margin.
SafetyWhat Burns in a Battery Fire?
Fire needs fuel. One electrolyte is fuel; the other is water.
SafetyThermal Runaway in VRLA
The charger-fed heat loop — who is exposed, what starts it, and what stops it.
SafetyBattery Safety
Handling, tools and rules that prevent the common accidents.
SafetyHandling & Lifting
The ten minutes in the air — the injury record, two regulators’ rules, the change-out and the stationary cell.
LifeOperating Temperature
The silent third party in every battery contract.
Straight talkSeven Expensive Myths
Folklore that costs buyers money, each given a verdict.
Straight talkBattery Recycling
The ~99% circle that closes — honestly told, shame included.
Straight talkThe Battery That Pays You Back
95%+ recovery, EPR under the 2022 Rules — and end-of-life value with a positive sign.
Straight talkBattery TCO
Why the cheapest battery is rarely the cheapest.
Straight talkMining Battery TCO
₹ per usable kWh-year — the six lines that decide an honest comparison.
SafetyThe Fault Current
What a battery bank can push into a short — why series cells do not raise it, parallel strings do.
Sodium-Ion Batteries
The chemistry coming for the cheap seats — honestly assessed.
Current affairsWhat Is a BESS?
Inside the containers rewiring the world’s grids.
Current affairsWhat Is a BMS?
The electronic guardian sealed batteries cannot live without.
Current affairsSecond-Life Batteries
Retired EV packs, reused — the promise and the frictions.
Current affairsThe Battery Passport
Europe’s new rulebook, decoded for exporters.
Current affairsEurope’s Carbon Number
The declaration coming for industrial batteries — and the data trail nobody has yet.
Current affairsVehicle-to-Grid
When the parked car becomes a power plant.
Current affairsBattery Swapping
Two minutes to full — and where it has quietly worked for decades.
Current affairsLithium Fires, Understood
Thermal runaway explained without fear-mongering.
Current affairsLead-Carbon Batteries
The old chemistry’s new trick against partial charging.
Current affairsData-Centre Batteries
The AI boom’s quiet backup story.
Current affairsHydrogen Energy Storage
The honest physics behind the hype — round-trip arithmetic included.
Current affairsThe Antimony Squeeze
The metal in the spine, the price that went wild — and the loop that returns it.
Current affairsWhy Battery Prices Move With Lead
The metal exchange has a clock — how much of the battery is lead, and four questions to compare quotes on the same day’s metal.
Current affairsLong-Duration Energy Storage
The 100-hour question — and why we sit this race out.
Current affairsFlow Batteries
Energy in tanks, power in a stack — the vanadium trick, honestly billed.
Current affairsSupercapacitor vs Battery
Seconds or hours — the one question that settles the choice, honestly billed.
Current affairsBlack Start
How a dead grid comes back to life — and what works the dark shift.
Current affairsIndia’s Battery Waste Rules
The law now follows your battery after it dies — a user’s guide.
TestingOne Weak Cell, One Weak String
Why the bus voltage can lie, and what IEEE 450 and IEEE 1188 ask you to read instead.
Can’t find your question?
The glossary covers the terms; our engineers cover everything else — including free sizing and battery-room drawing reviews.