BatteryBeak: Utility of making internal resistance and state of charge measurements

[WinDnDusT]

Originally Posted by Joe Ross

What method does your team currently use for determining the condition of batteries?

My team's method isn't really controlled. It's more like 'This battery looks new, it's probably good' or 'Oops, that battery died during the match, let's not use it again'.

We don't have a person who has the domain knowledge to create battery management processes and policies for us. And we really felt the consequences of that this past year. We started off the 2013 season with 6 new batteries and by the end of the season, not one inspires confidence for use in matches. We took all of our batteries to a neighbor team's workshop and borrowed a machine that put a load on the batteries. We put a 200 A load on the batteries and not one of our batteries made it 5 seconds before dropping to unusable voltage. This did not contrast nicely with the neighbor team's batteries which lasted much longer (around 35-45 seconds I think).

So I'm trying to gain the requisite knowledge to be able to step into this role.