Valve Regulated Lead Acid Battery Redesign

What Is It?

The Valve-Regulated Lead Acid Battery Redesign provides a structural support system that significantly reduces in-hull welding and reduces installation cost and duration.

How Does It Work?

The redesign creates new molds and tooling for the vendors production lines and development of new trays for the smaller cells. The shorter cell will lead to the  development of a new LA-class valve-regulated lead acid (VRLA) ship alteration leveraging off the stacked tray concepts.

What Will It Accomplish?

By redesigning the VRLA, the Navy will significantly reduce ship alteration installations duration, returning three years of lost operational availability. The redesign will simplify future battery replacements, with a potential $50 million savings over a six-year period, and reduce depot-level man-day requirements for modernization by approximately 75,000 man-days (opportunity cost).

VRLA is a PMS 392 2008 effort sponsored by the Office of Naval Research Technology Insertion Program for Savings. PMS 392 was tasked to develop a new design for the VRLA battery ship alteration that will reduce the cost and duration of installation.

Initial Los Angeles Class VRLA ship alteration installations exceeded budgeted costs by 70 percent, mainly due to the long duration required to install the labor-intensive welded rack structure that holds the battery cells. PMS 392 proposed a solution to save of the Navy more than $50 million over six years utilizing a two-prong redesign effort that will restore program cost and schedule performance.

As of October 2008, the VRLA technology has transitioned to PMS 392. The redesign has proven extremely successful, yielding the desired duration savings. To date, five VRLA installations have been completed and two additional installations are currently ongoing. Eighteen future installations are scheduled to take place by 2015.

Research Challenges and Opportunities:

  • Design tolerances for the new cabinets may require the installing activity to modify fabrication methods to ensure tolerances can be maintained.
  • Long lead-time material may not be available to support the initial install due to the potential of design changes identified during production mockups at the installing activity.

Point of Contact:

Michael Mentas
(703) 696-0340
michael.mentas@navy.mil

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