Tests of Acid Batteries for Hybrid Energy Storage and Buffering System—A Technical Approach

Abstract

Many armies around the world showed an increasing interest for the technology of renewable energy sources for military applications. However, to profit fully from solar or wind energy, an energy storage system is needed. In this article, we present an energy storage system based on acid-lead batteries as a component of a modular generation-storage as a model of military “smart camp”. We proposed a technical approach to study four different types of batteries: DEEP CYCLE, AGM, WET and VRLA in laboratory and real conditions typical for military equipment. It was observed that the best performance was observed for AGM battery in terms of the highest cold cracking amperage equal to 1205 A combined with the most compact construction and resistance to varying thermal conditions from −25◦ C, 25◦ C and 50◦ C. Additionally, a 12-month long-term testing in real conditions revealed that AGM and VRLA showed decrease in capacity value maintaining only approx. 80% of initial value.