Batteries — Laymen’s Glossary of Terms
Greetings friends! You have arrived here because I used a word in one of my articles that you haven’t seen before.
So as to go deeper in the topic at hand and not break the flow of the article you were reading, I’ve created this glossary of terms for you to come to anytime I use jargon and don’t feel like explaining it.
I could, like a boring writer send you off on links to understand for yourself whatever jargon I’m using, waste 10 minutes of your day only for you to get annoyed and give up reading my article. But I’m not going to do that, out of respect for your time, my writing, and the belief that anyone should be able to educate themselves on the internet.
If you, too, are researching batteries and come across a term you don’t understand, reach out to me (grethermurray.tobias@gmail.com) and I will add a simple definition to this article!
P.S. I will continue adding definitions as I go.
Glossary
Format: Term → Simple definition
Edit: I recently found this article which has lots of the definitions you may be looking for!
- LIBs → lithium-ion batteries
- ZIBs → zinc-ion batteries
- The intermittency problem → most clean energy sources are intermittent (they don’t happen at regular intervals which makes them less reliable). People use the expression “the sun doesn’t always shine and the wind doesn’t always blow” to describe this. The issue is that humans can’t impact whether the weather’s supply of energy will align with the demand of it.
This is one of the big reasons why batteries are so important; you can store extra energy for when you really need it. - Rated power capacity (in MW or GW) → the maximum amount of power the battery can charge or discharge at. Think of this as how quickly a battery can push out electricity.
Helpful analogy: a tap that can push out 4 drops of water/second has a much lower rated power capacity than one that can push out 100 drops/second. - Energy capacity (in kWh or MWh) → the total amount of energy the battery can store.
- Capacity (in mAh/g) → energy capacity and capacity get interchanged often. It’s better to look for what the unit the paper/article you’re reading uses. Capacity in mAh/g references how much charge (number of electrons) can go through one gram of your battery.
- Cycle life → how long the battery can last without having major degradation issues.
- Cost per kWh ($/kWh) → how much money it takes on average to store 1kWh of energy. Basic calculation is Cost of Entire Battery ÷ Amount of Energy Stored.
- Rated Capability (c) → maximum charge/discharge rate of a battery or cell. Expressed in a multiple of the C rate.
