Filled with acid, yes: a wet lead-acid battery travels the world as dangerous goods — UN 2794, Class 8, corrosive — and the packaging, paperwork and trained handling behind those words are not optional. That is the direct answer to the question in the title. But “dangerous goods” is a transport classification, not a character … Read more
Done properly, float charging has no expiry date: a standby battery is designed to spend its entire working life connected to its float charger — full, quiet and waiting. That is the honest answer to one of the most-asked questions in battery care, and it deserves to be said plainly before the caveats arrive. Telephone … Read more
In an underground coal mine, air is the scarcest utility there is. Every cubic metre must be pushed down a shaft, driven along kilometres of roadway by fans that never stop, shared between the men at the face and everything that burns, breathes or heats — and then hauled back out again carrying whatever the … Read more
Push current into a lead-acid battery faster than it can accept, and the excess does not charge the battery at all — it splits water and makes heat. That single sentence explains most hot batteries, most watering bills, and a surprising share of premature battery failures. On a recent visit to an underground mine, we … Read more
An equalising charge is a deliberate, controlled overcharge — and most of the chargers in the world are built, quite intentionally, so that they cannot give one. That single sentence resolves most of the confusion around equalisation equipment. People read that their flooded battery needs a periodic equalising charge, walk to the charger that has … Read more
A lead-acid battery in storage is not resting — it is slowly discharging itself, and how you store it decides how much battery is left on the day you finally install it. Batteries wait more than most people think: between factory and commissioning, between purchase and a delayed project, between seasons in a dealer’s stock. … Read more
Specific gravity is the density of the electrolyte compared with water — and in a flooded lead-acid battery it is the most honest state-of-charge gauge you own, because the acid is not a bystander in the reaction; it is a participant. As a cell discharges, sulphuric acid is consumed into the plates and the electrolyte … Read more
This is simply a guide. Please refer the EU directives for more details. Sooner or later, an industrial battery sold into Europe will have to arrive with a number attached: the greenhouse gases emitted in making it, declared, verified and printed. Not an environmental brochure — a figure, per battery model and per manufacturing plant, … Read more
A substation’s DC system is deliberately not connected to earth, and that single design decision is why an earth fault on it is harmless and dangerous at the same time. Harmless, because with the system floating, one accidental connection to earth completes no circuit: nothing trips, the protection relays keep working, the plant carries on. … Read more
A battery is not a bucket, and this is the single most expensive misunderstanding in fleet charging. Take a hundred ampere-hours out of a cell and you cannot put a hundred back and call the job done — you must put more back, every time, for the whole life of the battery, and you pay … Read more