Breathe Battery Technologies announces a partnership with VARTA
Breathe Battery Technologies, the developer of physics-based battery management software, has announced a partnership with VARTA, the battery specialist and manufacturer, to significantly reduce the charging time of the VARTA Easy Blade Battery series and increase the amount of energy that can be stored in the cells.
Breathe Charge, the innovative adaptive charging software from Breathe, has been applied to the lithium-ion based battery VARTA Easy Blade 48V, which is primarily used in small and medium sized vehicles like AGVs or forklifts.
The Breathe Charge software is specifically designed for faster charging and improved safety. For the VARTA Easy Blade 48V, it has reduced the charging time of the battery by 27%*, saving 23 minutes, while also allowing storage of 3% more energy in the cells. In addition, the lifetime of the battery is always retained. The software can be applied to all battery versions of the Easy Blade battery series.
Dr Ian Campbell, CEO at Breathe comments, “we are living in a world where more and more applications are battery-powered, from the smartphones in our pockets to heavy industrial vehicles. Therefore, healthy fast charging is crucial to enabling the next generation of gains in uptime and productivity. VARTA is an incredibly forward-thinking company with a great history so it wanted a solution that could both reduce charge time and increase energy stored in its battery. We’re delighted to see Breathe Charge on the Easy Blade 48V system, providing significantly faster charging.”
In addition, Breathe provided VARTA with a different charging solution to increase the amount of energy added to the battery during charge, so that VARTA customers can benefit from more uptime, runtime and range. Alexander Abele, Strategic Product Manager at VARTA comments, “for all applications and devices which are powered by an independent energy source, the charging time and battery lifetime are always the crucial challenges which need to be managed.
Our engineers, together with the experts from Breathe, were able to address exactly these points in different multi-step charge profiles.
The software is available from now on and applicable to our other customised battery solutions. We’re happy that, together with Breathe, we are now able to provide our customers with an even better battery system for their future-driven applications.”
Breathe and VARTA now want to expand the one-year-old partnership and explore opportunities for the wider uptake of the healthy fast charging technologies.
Faster charging results using Breathe Charge:
VARTA EasyBlade charging time reduced by 27% to 80% state of charge / SOC.
VARTA EasyBlade charging time reduced by 43% to 50% state of charge / SOC.
VARTA EasyBlade charging time reduced by 16% to 100% state of charge / SOC.
* relative to previous VARTA Easy Blade 48V performance
“We’re happy that, together with Breathe, we are now able to provide our customers with an even better battery system for their future-driven applications.”
Alexander Abele, Strategic Product Manager at VARTA