Electrochemical Impedance Spectroscopy and Determination of the Internal Resistance as a Way to Estimate Lead-Acid Batteries Condition

Attempts have been made to find the best procedure for the detection of premature battery capacity loss (the so called “PCL”) in AGM-VRLA 48 V batteries operating in telecommunication systems. However, recorded changes in internal resistance and potential did not give clear indications of the beginning of the PCL effect. The obtained correlation between internal resistance and potential derived from used batteries does not show the expected trend in measured parameters. It seems that the application of Electrochemical Impedance Spectroscopy (EIS), which is a faster and non-destructive method, may solve this problem. It is demonstrated that the change in internal resistance (which is an indicator of the state of health (SoH)) can be determined from EIS spectra during continuous operation of 12 V monoblocks in a backup power source of a base transceiver station (BTS).