EaglePicher Battery With State-of-Charge Indicator Approved by the U.S. Army
EaglePicher Technologies announced that the U.S. Army Communications Electronics Life Cycle Material Command (C-E LCMC) has approved its design of the BA-5590 Battery with a built-in, state-of-charge indicator (SOCI). Under terms of the contract, 40,000 batteries will be delivered to the U.S. Department of Defense during the first quarter of 2007. In April, EaglePicher was contracted to design and qualify the new battery, which is the next generation of EaglePicher's high-energy lithium sulfur dioxide (Li/SO2) BA-5590 that was launched and field tested in 2005.
"The BA-5590 is one of the most popular military batteries to provide both primary and back-up power for a wide range of communications equipment, imaging devices and weapons systems," said Steve Westfall, President of EaglePicher Technologies. "It has proven superiority in supporting operations in cold climates and for use in equipment requiring high discharge rates."
The C-E LCMC issued new battery specification requirements in early 2006, which included incorporation of the SOCI and the need for the complete discharge device (CDD) to have light-emitting-diode (LED) indicators when activated. The latter has been standard on EaglePicher's BA-5590 for the past four years.
EaglePicher's new version of the BA-5590 increases the number of indicator levels of battery capacity. This enhancement of the SOCI reinforces the tremendous cost and logistics savings available because users can now make replacement decisions based on the LED display indicating the remaining energy capacity versus discarding the battery after a single use.
Previously, mission-critical batteries may have been discarded prematurely due to the inability to know the remaining capacity. With SOCI on the BA-5590, the unique LED display, which is designed for both night operations and bright light environments, indicates the remaining capacity at levels of greater than 90, 70, 50, 30 and 10%. The EaglePicher BA-5590 battery equipped with the SOCI also allows users of the Single Channel Ground and Airborne Radio System to correlate percentage of capacity remaining to operating time remaining, allowing for more effective equipment management.
