Electricity: battery or capacitor charging or discharging – Serially connected batteries or cells – With discharge of cells or batteries
Patent
1989-03-06
1993-07-20
Hickey, R. J.
Electricity: battery or capacitor charging or discharging
Serially connected batteries or cells
With discharge of cells or batteries
320 43, 320 48, H02J 700, H01M 1046
Patent
active
052297047
DESCRIPTION:
BRIEF SUMMARY
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
The present invention pertains to a power supply system with at least one rechargeable battery, with a charging and monitoring unit, and with load current outputs and a charging feed input.
An auxiliary power supply system is known from FR-A-2,220,211, in which a rechargeable battery and a charging unit together with means for monitoring the operating state of the power system are housed in a multi-part housing. So that this auxiliary power supply system can provide help in the case of a breakdown in devices whose batteries are depleted, load current outputs are provided on the auxiliary power supply system as well as a mains connection so that the battery system's own auxiliary system can be charged via the mains and the charging unit provided in the housing.
A portable power supply system for battery-operated or accumulator-operated devices for which no nearby mains connection is available is described in GB-A-2,028,022. In the power supply system described therein, a battery, a charging unit, and a monitor for indicating the operating state of the system are again provided in and a multi-part housing; a mains connection is also provided so that the charging unit mentioned can charge the system battery.
As in the case of batteries and charging/monitoring units used separately, the problem of warranty claims also exists when these portable battery and charging/monitoring units are combined into a unit in a common multi-part housing. For the producer of these batteries, it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to test batteries which have been returned in defective condition within the warranty period for fulfillment of the warranty performance claims to determine whether or not the batteries have in fact been used properly, a condition normally required for the satisfaction of the claims mentioned. The larger the battery systems being used, the more acute this problem is becoming, which is in line with the current trend toward replacing more and more fuel-powered systems with electrically powered ones, such as vehicles with electric motors as the drive source.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION
The present invention has the purpose of solving the problem that it is difficult or impossible to discover how batteries, such as those being examined to determine the justification of warranty claims, have previously been used. This is solved in a power supply system of the type described above through the design which is characterized in that the battery and the charging/monitoring unit are combined structurally in such a way that they cannot be separated without the destruction of the means utilized to connect, and in that the monitoring unit is supplied with electrical power from the battery.
In other words, the charging/monitoring unit is assembled inseparably with the associated battery or group of batteries, which provides the opportunity of determining at any time the operating conditions which the battery has experienced.
In the case of power consumers operated by individual batteries or, in the case of large electric power consumers, operated by sets of batteries, it is also conventional to remove the power supplies from the electric power consumers for recharging and to charge them again in ventilated rooms or to use the electric power consumers to drive the power supplies to these ventilated rooms for recharging.
It is essential to provide very effectively ventilated rooms, because, when batteries of this type, such as lead batteries with a liquid electrolyte, which generate gas during charging, are recharged, hydrogen is formed, which must be exhausted so that it cannot combine with atmospheric oxygen to produce dangerous concentrations of oxyhydrogen gas. Batteries have become known recently which produce almost no gas when charged. These include batteries with a gel electrolyte, such as the lead batteries with a gel electrolyte sold under the name "Dryfit Traction Block" or in general under the name "Dryfit" batteries by Akkumulatorenfabrik Sonnenschein GmbH in B
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Hickey R. J.
Weinstein Louis
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