What is Battery Current ?

The second critical key component to battery design is the battery’s current requirements. PDAs, MP3s and other portable devices, for the most part, utilize a constant power discharge to operate. This means that the amount of current will increase as the battery discharges electricity in order to maintain constant power. So we will need to ultimately know the maximum current required. This is important since knowing the max current requirement will influence the necessary protection of chemistry, circuitry, wire, and capacity amongst others. Again we must know the current requirement over the entire nominal voltage range of the battery including start-up currents, surges (intermittent transient pulses). One other important aspect to know about current requirements is the inert current drain of the device. Devices, even when powered down, require small amounts of current to power memory, switches and component leakage.