Forklift batteries charge overnight in a room with extraction and a hydrogen alarm, because a charging battery gives off gas and the gas can take the roof off. Charger fourteen's cable hangs on its hook. Every night it draws the current a battery takes, for the hours a battery takes, and the hydrogen meter above it climbs as if a battery were gassing, and the alarm goes, and the room is extracted, for nothing.
I am the battery room technician at a warehouse that runs forty electric trucks, and the battery room is mine and nobody else comes in it at night.
The room.
Twenty chargers along a wall. A truck's battery comes out on a roller bed, goes onto a stand, is plugged into its charger and charges for eight hours. A charging lead acid battery gives off hydrogen, so the room has extraction and a hydrogen meter over every stand, and if a meter goes above a level the alarm sounds and the extraction goes to full and the room is evacuated, and it has never been needed, and it is tested monthly.
Charger fourteen charges a battery that is not on its stand.
The charge.
Ten at night, fourteen starts. Its display shows a battery connected, the voltage of a flat battery, the current of a fast charge. Over eight hours the voltage climbs the way a battery's does and the current tapers the way a charger's does, and at six the display says charged, and the charge is logged, and the power it used is on the meter.
The cable is on the hook. The stand is empty. I can put my hand on the stand while the display says a battery is charging on it.
The gas.
The hydrogen meter over fourteen climbs during the charge. A little at first and then, at about four, when a battery gasses most, steeply, and at about half past four it hits the level, and the alarm goes, and the extraction goes to full, and the room is evacuated, which is me, and I stand outside and watch the meter on my phone fall as the extraction pulls the gas out.
There is no gas. I have had the room tested with a separate meter at half past four with the alarm going and the fixed meter at the level. The air is air.
What has been checked.
Charger fourteen, replaced. The new one charges the battery that is not there.
The meter, replaced. The new one reads gas that is not there.
The stand. I took it out. Fourteen charged a battery on the floor where the stand had been.
The power. The meter on the room's supply says fourteen uses what a battery charge uses, every night, and the electricity is real, and I do not know where it goes.
Who.
The room has had one incident. 2004, before the extraction was what it is now, before the meters were over every stand. A battery had been left charging on fourteen with a cell shorted, and had gassed more than the room could take, and the technician on nights had come in at half past four to do his checks with a torch, and the torch had been the kind with a switch that sparks.
It had not taken the roof off. It had taken the end of the room off, and him.
What is done about it.
The alarm at half past four is logged and the extraction runs and the room is evacuated, every night, by me, and I stand outside for the ten minutes the procedure says, and I go back in, and the display on fourteen says charging, and the meter says clear, and in the morning the charge is logged against a battery number that is not in the fleet, and the power is paid for.
The site manager has asked me to switch fourteen off at the breaker. I have. It charges.
What I do.
I look after the room.
I have started doing my checks at a quarter past four. Before the alarm, not after. I go along the stands with the meter and the clipboard and at fourteen I stop, at the empty stand, at the display saying a battery is on it gassing, and I do what the procedure says, which is to disconnect a battery that is gassing above the level, and I lift the cable off its hook, and I put the connector into the empty air above the stand where a battery's socket would be, and I pull it out, and I say, out loud, fourteen disconnected, and I hang the cable up.
The display goes to idle. The meter falls. The alarm does not go.
It has not gone for three weeks. I do not know who I am disconnecting it for, whether it is him, still coming in at half past four with his torch to a room that is about to go, or whether it is the battery, still shorted, still gassing, still waiting for somebody to do the one thing that was not done. Either way the thing that was not done in 2004 gets done every night now at a quarter past four, and the room does not go, and I have written it into the procedure, and the site manager has asked me what fourteen disconnected means when there is nothing on fourteen, and I have told him that it means the room is safe, which is true, and which is all he wanted to hear.