UL getting involved in New Notebook Lithium Ion Battery Safety Standards

Underwriters Laboratory (UL), an independent product safety standards outfit, is getting involved in a review of lithium ion batteries following the huge safety recall of nearly 10 million notebook batteries using Sony cells like those from Apple Computer.

ISC and IEEE are also reviewing safety standards. The IEEE will revise its laptop battery standard, IEEE 1625, "IEEE Standard for Rechargeable Batteries for Portable Computing", which was approved in 2004. This update targets an improvement in the overall performance of laptop battery systems and seeks to address recent calls to make these systems more reliable and robust. The IEEE project is expected to be completed within 18 months.

Hopefully, the three groups will agree on a set of standards with battery manufacturers that will preclude safety problems in the future. More... [Dana Baggett and Bill Fox]