How To Select The Right Battery For Your Application? Part 1: Important Battery Metric Considerations
The one thing toremember about battery selection is that there is no such thing as a perfectbattery that works for every application. Selecting the right battery for your application is about identifying the most important battery metrics and trading these off against others. For instance, if you need a lot of power for your application, cell internal resistance needs to be minimized, and this is often done by increasing electrode surface area. But this also increases inactive components such as current collectors and conductive aid, so energy density is traded off to gain power. While youractual design goals on the battery may be lofty, you could have to give up somethings in order to gain others when it comes to actual battery performance (Fig1). A lead acid battery works great in an automotive starter battery where it provides the required high rate capability. However, with its toxicity and low energy density it would be a terrible choice for a portable electronics applica...