Batteries will allow for long-range electric tracks to have buffers attached to them for better reliability, and in the future allow for storage for Charge Machinery.

Planned Types:

• Nickel-Iron - Targeted for initial implementation - medium energy/volume, very poor charge retention, good draw rate, 80% charge efficiency
• Nickel-Zinc - high energy/volume, mediocre charge retention, poor draw rate, 70% charge efficiency
• Lead-Acid - Wait on ChemLab - low energy/volume, good charge retention, high draw rate, 85% charge efficiency
• Zinc-Carbon - low-medium energy/volume, very good charge retention, pre-charged single use
• Zinc-Silver - very high energy/volume, very good charge retention, pre-charged single use

Issues:

• #1209 - Zinc Ore
• The system currently doesn't know how to handle non-rechargeable sources. This is actually a tricky problem. Should it draw from non-rechargeable sources (which includes single use batteries, generators, and the ic2 feeder) to charge rechargeable ones . Or should there be four types each handled differently (rechargeable, infinite, single-use, generator). How do we calculate network efficiency and max draw for theses things? More design work is needed here.

http://www.mpoweruk.com/specifications/comparisons.pdf
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_commercial_battery_types

Ref #1203

Zinc would probably require another ore. However, I would also propose Zinc-Carbon if we go that route, which would function as a single-use battery.

what about LI-ion? id say very high energy/volume, very good charge retention, good draw rate, 90% efficiency. a have no idea where would you get Lithium tho.

I could have sworn a wrote down a bunch of numbers for this somewhere....

The two disposable batteries are implemented, but they need some texture tweaking and need some more attention on how to handle initial charge state and how to handle a discharged state.