Poster ID: EPSCOR0020 - Battery Practices

Assessing Public Knowledge and Habits of Battery Charging

Evan Isbell and W. LePage, Dept. of Mechanical Engineering, The University of Tulsa, Tulsa, OK. Faculty Advisor, Dr. Will LePage, The University of Tulsa, Tulsa, OK.

ABSTRACT

Although mobile phones have become integral in the workplace and society, we hypothesized that the public lacks knowledge – or is even misinformed – about the proper use and charging of lithium-ion batteries. Proper care is important because it leads to unnecessarily rapid decay in battery health. This increases costs for consumers and provides damaging environmental impacts. It is accepted in the research community that Li-ion batteries best maintain their long-term health when they are charged slowly, under steady state, kept around or below half capacity, cycled at small ranges, and with optimized charging software enabled [1]. Previous work has skimmed the surface on assessing public knowledge and habits about battery charging [2]. This work goes significantly beyond the prior work to guide public informational media, direct future battery research, and equip the general population with Li-ion battery intelligence.

To assess public knowledge and habits of battery charging, a survey was introduced to 453 respondents using the online crowd-sourcing service MTurk. When respondents were asked what they thought the best charging practice is for maintaining battery healthy over several years, 51% of participants responded that the best practice is to charge after draining completely, indicating a possible common belief among the population. When asked about their charging habits, 78% of respondents drain their batteries most of the way or entirely empty. This is indicative that a majority of the population regularly practices large cycling ranges. When asked about the new “battery optimization” software recently introduced into many smartphones (i.e., starting in 2019 with iOS 13 for the iPhone), almost half (47%) of respondents were unaware of its existence. Another interesting result was that 74% of respondents use the “stock” chargers that came with their device. Using an off-brand charger could speed up recommended C-rates of devices, causing further decay.

Moving forward, we hope to extend into (a) laboratory research to study battery charging, especially “partial charge-discharge” cycles, (b) public-informational work to promote knowledge about proper battery charging, and (c) further development of mathematical battery charging models to build upon existing work in the area [3].

Citations:
[1] Woody, et al. Journal of Energy Storage 28 (2020): 101231.

[2] Saxena, Sanchez, Pecht. IEEE Industrial Electronics Magazine 11.2 (2017): 35-44.

[3] T. Raj, A. Wang, C. Monroe et al. Batteries and Supercaps (2020): 10.1002/batt.202000160