Knowing how to properly charge and maintain your powered wheelchair or mobility scooter batteries is vitally important. For many, these electric powered chariots, as one customer so eloquently described them, provide independence and are a necessary part of everyday living. So when dead or dying batteries are encountered, it is more than an inconvenience; it is a world on hold event! Our goal today is to provide some basic battery charging tips and some simple tests that can be performed to diagnose a bad battery. We will also share a few other nuggets of wisdom that may help debunk some battery myths you may have come across in your travels and hopefully provide some preventative medicine so to speak.

What a great question! What is it about the Lifeline AGM battery that makes them so popular and dependable? RV and boat owners seem to ask for this brand more than any other despite it costing more than other private labels. If it were just a fad, strong marketing or another ‘me-too’ battery this trend would have subsided years ago, but it hasn’t. This type of loyalty can only draw one conclusion…Yes they are that good! Read on as we review the success behind Lifeline batteries.

Concorde: The Driving Force Behind the LifeLine Battery

Concorde Battery Corporation has been manufacturing batteries just outside Los Angeles, California since 1979. Recently, Concorde opened a second manufacturing facility just outside Atlanta, Georgia. They operate under four application specific brands: Concorde, Lifeline, Chairman and Sun Xtender. The Concorde label designs aircraft batteries and batteries for shipboard use utilized by militaries the world over inclusive of the U.S. Military and several Commonwealth

I was looking under the hood of my Suburban yesterday pretending to know what I was doing. I wanted to see if I could figure out what was causing our heat to be blasting when the air conditioning was on the coolest setting. In true fashion, my mind started to do what it does best; lose focus on the task at hand. I couldn’t help but notice we have a Drakon Group 34/78 battery installed. And so I pondered…

The other day in our ‘What’s What in the Battery World’ series we compared the Optima RedTop, BlueTop and YellowTop batteries. The focus of the post was to determine how you could decipher which color Optima was best for you and your application. Specifically, we focused on the Group 34/78 size as a guide to understanding the differences. As I stared at this Drakon battery, I wondered “Who made the best sealed AGM Group 34/78 battery? What is it about some of these brands that make people so loyal or perhaps fanatical? Is it based solely on performance or some type of advertising or is

I was reading about an innovative company known as Advanced Battery Concepts (ABC for short) out of Clare, MI. They have developed a BiPolar battery technology that promises to propel the lead acid battery industry into the limelight once again. For this age old industry, thought to be in its twilight years, fighting against competing technologies, such as lithium-ion and NIMH Cobalt, this truly is remarkable. But what makes this technology so extraordinary? And perhaps more importantly, what is a bipolar battery and why should we care?

A Short Historical Foundation

I will attempt to keep my terminology and definitions ultra-simple and relate examples of them to names and brands you may recognize. To begin, let’s start with the inventor.

The concept of a bipolar battery has been around for nearly 100 years! Pyotr Kapitsa, who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1978, first introduced the theory behind bipolar batteries back in 1924. This Russian born scientist is famous for many discoveries

Many installers use the L16 solar battery in their renewable energy projects. However, most tend to use the old flooded conventional deep cycle batteries rather than the newer more versatile sealed AGM solar batteries. What is the rationale for this decision? The question begs to be asked, why not use a sealed L16 solar battery?

Mike Chose the Sealed UB63800 L16 Solar Battery

A few weeks ago a customer of ours purchased 24 of the 6 volt 380 amp hour sealed L16 solar battery made by Universal Power Group. This workhorse of a battery, part number UB63800, has very favorable specs when comparing to some of the traditional flooded batteries

More Frustration for Honeywell Generator Owners

For those of you that own a Honeywell Portable Electric Generator and think you need a XTAX14AHL-BS replacement battery—STOP and READ This Important Finding! We have had several customers call and share their frustration over issues finding the correct generator battery. We thought the issue was limited to the GTZ14S Generator Battery Dilemma, which we wrote about July 16th 2015. However, Honeywell portable generator owners have notated another issue that involves the Xtreme XTAX14AHL-BS.

Generator Battery Dilemma: GTZ14S Non JIS & YTZ14S JIS Standard

We came across an interesting find this week concerning a non JIS labeled GTZ14S generator battery. Never before had we come across a non JIS power sport sized sealed lead acid battery and were skeptical of what the customer was telling us. Sure enough, we found a picture of an off brand battery using the GTZ14S part number with opposite polarity in a BE9000 and BE6500 generator.