12/10/2014

WhatisPeukertsLaw?|AllAboutLeadAcidBatteries

All About Lead Acid Batteries

PEUKERTS LAW AND EXPONENT

EXPLAINED
What is Peukerts Law
Battery capacity refers to the amount of energy that the battery can
store. Battery manufacturers often use specifications known as Amp
Hours and Reserve Capacity to provide an indication of what a
batterys storage capacity is.
However, the problem with quantifying the storage capacity of a lead
acid battery is that the amount of energy stored is dependent on the batterys discharge rate. The
greater the discharge rate, the lower the delivered capacity.

This phenomenon is well documented and is often know as Peukerts Law. Peukert, a German
scientist, first presented this law in 1897 and provided an equation that helps to tell us what a
battery capacity is based on the rate that it is being discharged.

The Equation for Peukerts Law

Youll see the formula for Peukerts law expressed a few different ways, but the one battery users
are most interested in, is the one that tells them how long a battery will last under particular load
(or current draw).
That equation is this
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WhatisPeukertsLaw?|AllAboutLeadAcidBatteries

t - Time in hours. Its the time that the battery will last given a particular rate of discharge (the
current).
H The discharge time in hours that the Amp Hour specification is based on. For example, if
you had a 100 Amp Hour battery at a 20 hour discharge rate, H would equal 20.
C The battery capacity in Amp Hours based on the specified discharge time. For a 100 Amp
Hour battery, this would be
I This is the current that were solving for. For example, if we wanted to know how long a
battery would last while drawing 7.5 amps, we would enter it here.
k the Peukert Exponent. Every battery has its own Peukert exponent. Sometimes the
manufacturer will provide it and other times we may need to figure it out.

Peukert Example on a 100 Amp Hour Battery

Lets consider a flooded wet cell lead acid battery that has 20 hour discharge rating of 100 amp
hours.
Based on this specification, we know that this battery will supply 5 amps for 20 hours while
maintaining a voltage that is above 10.5 volts.
If we were to increased the discharge rate to 10 amps, we might erroneously concluded that the
battery will last for 10 hours.
Using the equation for Peukerts law as shown below, we find that the battery will last
significantly less than 10 hours.
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WhatisPeukertsLaw?|AllAboutLeadAcidBatteries

NOTE In order to solve this equation were going to need to know what the Peukerts exponent
is. For a flooded battery, its typically going to be somewhere between 1.2 and 1.6. For this
example, were going to use 1.4.

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WhatisPeukertsLaw?|AllAboutLeadAcidBatteries

What is Peukert Exponent for Your Particular Battery

Its different from battery to battery. Worse, many manufacturers do not readily publish a
Peukerts exponent. That said, there are some general ranges for the different kinds of lead acid
batteries that can be used for estimation purposes.
AGM batteries range between 1.05 and 1.15
Gel batteries range between 1.1 and 1.25
Flooded batteries range between 1.2 and 1.6
If more accurate estimates are required, it is possible to calculate the Peukert exponent from
most battery manufacturer specifications. Stay tuned for another article.

Peukerts Law Limitations

Peukerts law is a valuable tool for estimation. However, it has limitations. Among them are
The affect that temperature has on batteries is not included in the equation.
Battery age is not considered. The Peukert exponent increases with battery age.
If youre calculating for a low discharge rate, the equation does not account for the fact that
each battery has a self discharge rate.
All that said, in terms of estimation, Peukerts law gets us much closer to estimating real world
performance of a battery than simple extrapolations of the amp hour rating.

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