In this paper a new method for the determination of the double layer capacitance and the internal inductance of a cell or battery is described. The resonance frequency of the double layer capacity with the internal inductance is determined by means of a phase measurement. The method can be used during operation of the battery. During a constant current discharge it is possible to predict the available discharge time from the resonance frequency at the start of the discharge and the actual resonance frequency. The method is tested with success on lead-acid batteries (VRLA, Plante) and nickel-cadmium batteries and it shows that the active surface is proportional to the state-of-charge (SOC). For primary zinc-MnO2 cells the measured electrical capacitance is not simply related to SOC.

A UPS with an energy storage function using long-cycle-life VRLA batteries has been developed. Combining the functions of UPS and energy storage is effective to enhance the cost-effectiveness of the UPS. New long-cycle-life VRLA batteries, with capacities of 1000 or 1500 Ah at 2 V, have been developed for the UPS. A cycle life of 3000 or more cycles was estimated from our cycle test. The UPS has been installed in a telecommunications building for field-testing. This paper describes the system configuration, electrical characteristics of the UPS and its components, and result of our field test.

Stand-alone photovoltaic (PV) power systems are potential power sources for telecommunications equipment especially equipment installed outdoors. To be practical, they must have a high conversion efficiency and a long lifetime. We have proposed a stand-alone photovoltaic power system that uses electric double-layer capacitors (EDLCs) and lead acid batteries as power storage devices. This system smooths out the fluctuations in power generated by the PV array by using the EDLC's charge-and-discharge power; this reduces the number of battery charge-and-discharge cycles. We simulated the system's operating characteristics and evaluated the photovoltaic array mismatching loss, system conversion loss, battery contribution factor, averaged battery state-of-charging, and maximum depth-of-discharging. The results show that the system is effective at reducing the mismatching loss and battery contribution factor, so the system efficiency is expected to be improved by using high conversion efficiency DC-DC converters. Moreover the system can maintain the averaged battery state-of-charging during operation. This indicates that smaller batteries can be used. The maximum depth-of-discharging can be kept lower than in the conventional system. Consequently, the proposed system should have a longer battery lifetime.