Standard Battery Chargers

When the most influential industry leaders decide to create "standard" rechargeable battery types, it is with the goal of higher greater sales of these chosen models and also to cause battery servicing product suppliers to respond by supporting off-the-shelf models. This concept was first promoted by the joining of Duracell and Intel in a project to promote a series of standard battery sizes, shapes, and electrical specifications. These batteries were originally identified with the DR prefix (e.g. DR15, DR30, DR36, etc.)

Our standard battery charger product specifications:

Our standard battery charger manufacturers include:

BTI
Energizer
Duracell
Energy +
Gold Peak
Moli Energy
National Power

In the long run, the standardization of battery chargers yields to industrial resistance in several ways. It's natural for companies to seek uniqueness, that "little bit better" product. Standard identifiers soon dissolve into a mass of similar product names that stress differences rather than “standard" characteristics. Price competition leads to variations of design, different battery enclosing materials, connector types, and more. End product designers, desperate to minimize their product size, often prefer to configure battery cells in ways that optimize their unique packaging needs. So, standardization seems a relatively temporary affair.

Span, however, was there at the initial introduction of "standard" batteries and responded with a series of chargers having designations "DRCxxx" in which the "xxx" refers to specific battery models and related servicing features. Span's standard battery chargers were also the first by a major battery manufacturer to adopt the "smart battery" concept, "smart battery" indicating the means for a battery to indicate its relative charge status. Span enjoyed being the only standard battery charger supplier able to support this feature for nearly two years.

Smart Battery Chargers

"Smart battery" products suffered initial problems, some of which continue today. Span was again first to recognize these problems and first to provide means to counter their effects. From the very first days of "smart batteries" in the field, all Span chargers included a calibration feature that causes battery electronics to reset, thereby eliminating errors in estimated charge status that naturally accumulate over time.