Tadirian TL5101 battery, I am impressed

[CaptDon]

I decided to open up my Alesis HR-16 drum machine to check on the memory battery. It is a TL-5101 dated 6/88. So it is about 36 years old. Still measured 3.74 volts!!! I bought a new one anyway. I compared some voltage drop reading under light load between the old battery and the new one and there is an almost un-noticable difference!!! The unit wasn't powered on for over 10 years and still had the old settings stored perfectly. There is no real time clock so I guess the static memory only drew a couple of microamps? Thank the power above that there wasn't the ni-cad 'creeping crud' syndrome!!

[coppice]

There are a few companies trying to make extremely long life batteries now. We'll have to wait to access their success. Tadiran is the only one I know who has been doing it long enough to have an actual track record.

[jbb]

If I were making something like a defibrillator or rescue beacon, Tadirian would be my first step.

But there are other manufacturers out there making the lithium thionyl chloride chemistry. At a previous job, we sourced pouch cells for backup batteries. These were much more convenient for manufacturing; we stuck them down with some 3M VHB tape, soldered the terminals down and then conformal coated over the top. That being said, we were only after a 5 year shelf life and no one would die if a unit didn’t last that long.