Battery Testing: Valuable Information about Battery Testing and Reading

By: Mark McAllister Click author's name for more of his/her articles

Battery testing is the only way to determine the amount of charge remaining in a battery. The instrument used in carrying out this function is a battery tester. The secret of preventing battery failures is to avoid misuse and more importantly, to keep track of the capacity of your batteries and not to allow one battery to damage a string of good batteries. A capable battery monitoring device may detect a battery that is on its way out (hopefully) before it actually happens. One of the best ways to monitor your batteries is to frequently measure the capacity of your stock on a regular basis.

The various battery capacity measurements are; milliampere-hours (mAh) – which is used for smaller cells and the ampere-hours (Ah) used for large cells. Many different methods are available for obtaining battery capacity utilizing a variety of of the shelf equipment to very specialized and sophisticated products designed to obtain the highest degree of accuracy in a mission critical application. You may not think you need to know the health of your batteries until its too late. Therefore, it is very important to get valuable information that would guide you when choosing battery tester and it depends widely on your specific battery testing application. Any way you cut it, accuracy is compulsory when testing a battery.

Accuracy in battery testing is essential; in the fire alarm industry, conductance is not an accepted form of testing. Load is the only approved method for determining capacity for critical systems. Without the application of load during a battery test, false negatives and false positives are prevalent. But, when you are testing a car battery, the conductance method of testing is prevalent. It is not a highly regulated industry and therefore when it comes to the car battery tester industry, the story is entirely different. If nine out of ten or even a frequently correct reading is sufficient, the conductance technique gives a real quick reading of the battery. In the automotive battery testing industry, the occurrence of false positives or false negatives are widely overlooked. but when it comes to life safety systems, uninterruptible power and mission critical, the story is completely different.

The question is what battery testing device is capable of delivering effective results for your needs. Maybe accuracy is your highest concern, or maybe you are looking for a fast and somewhat reliable system for your vehicle. The most confusing thing to users is that some of the battery tester companies might not explain things in great detail and if you are not careful, you might be led astray as a user. A good tip for selecting a battery tester is to enquire if the instrument applies the same load to every battery being tested irrespective of the size or type. This information is important because if there is no need to manually input the variable the load level will most likely be applied at the same rate for every size. The previously stated would be great for saving time, but not great for accurate results.

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About The Author:

Mark McAllister is author of this article on Battery tester. Find more information about Battery testers here.