Survey of reliability information on lead acid batteries forcommercial, industrial, and utility installations

摘要

This paper describes one component out of 239 contributing to theculmination of a 24000 man-hour effort to collect operational andmaintenance data. The data collection process and the resultant data onlead acid vented batteries used in uninterruptible power supplies (UPS)equipment is the subject of this paper. In this paper the use of leadacid batteries in UPS is compared to the use of gel cell-storedbatteries in them. Gel cell-stored batteries operate in the same manneras a lead acid battery, but a self-contained gel replaces the liquidchemical that is the electrolyte. Information was obtained on a varietyof commercial and industrial facility types (including office buildings,hospitals, water treatment facilities, prisons, utilities, manufacturingfacilities, school universities and bank computer centers), with varyingdegrees of maintenance quality. Data collection guidelines and goalswere established to ensure that sufficient operational and maintenancedata were collected for statistically valid analysis. Time-to-failuredata, helpful in model development, were collected, when available, todetermine device failure characteristics. A database system, withflexible output capabilities, was developed to track both the equipmentinformation. The results supported the main hypothesis. Maintenancequality level was a predictor of availability. In addition, theinformation obtained can aid facility designers and engineers inevaluating different designs to minimize production/mission failure andto estimate the down times associated with various systems or subsystems