Extending Battery Life
[IMGCAP(1)]Heres a surprise: An aircraft lead-acid battery is designed to last 10 to 12 years, not the two to three years most of use as a replacement cycle. Insiders in the battery industry say that a lead/acid battery contains enough reactive material (lead) to last at least five times as long as most do.
So the loaded question is why don’t batteries last longer. Why do they seem to peter out and die in 36 months or so?
The reason may be twofold. One is that aircraft batteries suffer through long periods of disuse and the other is that the natural enemy of all lead-acid batteries is something called plate sulfation, which is thought to account for 80 percent of all battery failu…