Think of all any gadget you can. Laptops, phones, watches, GPS machines? Now think of the one thing that’s common among these without which, the product would be extremely inconvenient to use and near worthless. That’s right. Portability. Now how is this achieved? Well, all credit goes to the ingenious invention, the battery. Invented by Gaston Plante in 1859, it did have its own share of drawbacks such as being plagued with a low energy density or in simple English, low energy per kilogram of the stuff. The good thing about it though, was that it could easily give out a great surge of current which meant it has a good power to weight ratio. Of course, as time has passed since then, this device has been vastly improved. It was earlier a liquid based and has ever since evolved into a grid of lead smeared with a lead oxide paste. Also, with the advent of the internet and the rapidly growing coverage of it, one could easily buy online flat plate batteries in the comfort of their homes for their inverters. The latest advancement is a Valve Regulated Lead-Acid (VRLA) battery which uses a gel instead and can be oriented however needed.
Motor vehicles rely heavily on VRLA batteries since they are pretty cheap and offer great energy densities. These batteries are used in other fields as well.
- These Valve Regulated Lead-Acid batteries, are spill-proof and also act as backup supplies in some UPSs for personal computers, some electric wheelchairs and motorcycles. The now archaic vacuum tube radio receivers used to use these batteries to heat up their filaments as well.
- Starting, Lighting and Ignition (SLI) batteries a.k.a, the lead-acid-plate batteries are capable of giving short surges of high currents and are perfect for starting up automobiles and have sold over 450 million units in the year 2002, consuming about 4 million tonnes of lead in the process.
- The batteries that we see being used as the power source for backup supplies in grid energy storages, cell towers, off-grid houses and what not, are wet cell standby batteries. Emergency lighting and power sumps also need them. They allow for deep discharge rates and are desirable in these applications.
- The trending electric vehicles and automobiles use traction batteries, which find their use in golf carts and some old electric cars, bikes. These are slowly being phased out by lithium ion batteries thanks to Tesla’s generousness that saw them openly share their patents to the public.
- The heavy hauling vehicles like diesel powered submarines use massive lead-acid plate batteries. Their cousin, the nuclear-powered submarines also find use for these batteries as standby sources of power. They are used to run electric motors.
Looking at how India has been growing recently, thanks to the government’s imitative of electrifying all villages in the country being fully successful, the demand for an uninterrupted supply of electricity would likely see a huge rise. These places would benefit if they could buy flat plate battery in India. These batteries have withstood the test of time and offers great energy storage capabilities and robustness, which makes them extremely practical.
