VRLA battery development and reliability considerations

Given the wide scale acceptance of VRLA battery in standby usage, efforts to improve its reliability has been a continuous endeavor. This effort received a large impetus from the several catastrophic and well-publicized incidents with VRLA installations in the early stages, which did however allow an insight into the root causes of battery failure. The main focus of the development work has been on these root causes: more corrosion resistant grid and strap alloy, superior absorbent glass mat separator, compression issues in cell design and the need to use pure components for minimizing side reactions that lead to early failure. Improvements in these areas together with attention to battery layout within the cabinets where they were deployed and providing electronic controls are now resulting in a vastly superior VRLA experience for standby applications.