Battery Care and Management

To protect your workforce, we strongly recommend using Sepura batteries with all of your radios. Our intelligent batteries are conformance tested to a stringent standard to ensure they are safe, reliable and can be charged on or off the radio.

The guidance below is designed to help you optimise the performance and operational life of your Sepura batteries, as well as identify when they need replacing.

Daily best practice

We advise carrying out the following checks on a daily basis to ensure user safety and obtain the best performance:

• Ensure batteries are fully charged at the start of users’ shifts
• Visually inspect batteries to check for any signs of physical damage. If there are signs of swelling, wear or damage, it must be replaced. Typical causes of this could be due to:
  • Overcharging or heavy use and a cycle life of >500
  • High-temperature exposure for extended periods (many hours)
  • Storage at too high a charge level
• Keep communications short and focused
• Avoid using the radio with the speaker audio level set at maximum, and use an earpiece where possible
• Decrease the time the backlight stays on between presses (this can be customised)
• Take into account that operation at low temperatures will reduce battery endurance
• Where possible, decrease the rate of GPS reporting
• Minimise operation in both DMO or duplex (telephone type) modes as these can result in a higher current consumption
• Check the operating frequency and ensure you have chosen the most appropriate antenna for your use case. The radio automatically adjusts its transmitted signal power as a result of the received signal strength. If the radio regularly operates in weak signal areas, such as rural areas, it will transmit at full power for most of the time.

Charging batteries

We recommend always using a Sepura-approved charging device for your batteries and following the warning information on both the battery label and the user manual provided with the charging device.

To remain safe and protect your batteries:

• Never use or attempt to charge a battery that shows signs of damage or swelling, or that has been dropped or received a ‘heavy blow’. Always inspect fully to check for any damage to the battery, as this may not be obvious.
• Perform charging at an ambient temperature between +5 °C and +35 °C (41 °F and 95 °F). Charging will be suspended when the internal battery cell temperature is below +5 °C (41 °F) or above +45 °C (113 °F).
• Charge batteries in a well-ventilated area away from combustible materials
• Do not immerse batteries in water or expose the battery contacts to moisture
• Do not incinerate or expose batteries to temperatures above 85 °C (185 °F)
• Do not short-circuit battery contacts or swallow, open or disassemble batteries

Storing batteries

If you’re planning to store a large number of batteries, failure to store them correctly could lead to reduced capacity and battery life, and in extreme circumstances, damage to or complete failure.

It is advised to:

• Store batteries in a fire-resistant or separate room or area, such as a warehouse or container for hazardous materials
• Store batteries in a cool dry place below +20°C/68 °F away from heating devices or direct sunlight
• Avoid storing unpacked batteries, as this can cause short circuits and heat generation
• Store batteries at the appropriate charge level and apply regular conditioning for the radio type:

When to replace your batteries

Like all products, batteries age. Mechanical wear and tear and the gradual decrease in battery capacity over time can impact performance. Once your batteries have been charged more than 500 times, the capacity typically drops to around 80%. If your batteries have reached this number of charge cycles, we recommend replacing them.

Battery age should also be monitored and any batteries that have been used for more than 24 months should be replaced. Every battery label includes the date of manufacture of a battery. This can be a useful guide to establish the battery deployment date within a fleet. The age can be identified using the battery label (see below).

The easiest way to check the age of a fleet of deployed batteries quickly and accurately is by using Sepura’s TETRA radio application, RadioAsset, which automates the process and reduces the need for any manual handling. The app dispatches the required information to the fleet administrator following the battery age and lifecycle check.