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‘Dumsor’ which is now a household name in Ghana is causing tragedies and killing persons in the country yet the situation has not been solved.

President John Mahama recently has asked Ghanaians not to allow the current power crisis to distract them from paying attention to the major improvements in other sectors of the economy after ones again promising that the problem will be over.

Many Ghanaian celebrities have also campaigned against the situation with a thousand turn up of a #DumsorMustStop vigil to express their grievances.

However, the unending power crisis have caused the life of a young lady identified as “Blandine”.

Blandine who is not the first and probably wouldn’t be the last to suffer from the unstable power crisis casualties was believed to have been electrocuted to death by a power bank she was charging.

Her gory picture has gone viral on social media with mixed reactions from the populace.

According to a “hearsay” information, the young was “chatting with her friends and fell asleep. The power bank was heated, when the lights came back, and it got stuck to her skin. She was electrocuted. Her parents found her dead”.

However, Peacefmonline.com has dug into Power Banks and its implications to owners.

In present day, we use electronic devices on day-to-day basis, such as our mobile phones, tablets. The problem with these so powerful devices we are using is that it consumes a lot of energy, and they could drain their own batteries in such a short time.

Of course, without energy, these so smart, and so expensive devices are useless and worth as much as paperweights. So, power bank can serve this purpose perfectly. It could energize your devices back to life and prolong the usage of your devices for hours.

what you need to know about Power Banks

The main component of a power bank is a lithium ion / lithium polymer battery. Although these types’ of batteries are commonly used, the safety of battery product is always the utmost concern.

Power Bank safety can be addressed on two [2] fronts:

1 Battery Quality Grade A is a general concept used to denote a very good quality battery. The real test is whether or not the battery has a UL Certification.

Power banks have many certifications, most popular power bank batteries have passed the UL 1642 test which is a set of rigorous Electrical, Mechanical, Environmental, and Fire Exposure Tests.

UL is the most widely accepted certification that denotes a battery’s compliance with recognized safety requirements.

2. The Protective Circuitry or [PTC] is considered a “Safety Valve”. This protects the equipment, the charged device, and user.

PTC prevents Internal and External Short Circuit, Abnormal Charge/Over Charge, forced Discharge, and more.

It’s easy to reduce the costs of power banks by cutting out the cost of battery certifications and protective circuitry.

But doing so creates a tangible risk to the safety of the power bank, the phone and other charged devices, and even harm the user.

Can Power Bank Kills?

According to Peacefmonline.com research, the output voltage of the power bank should have output voltage and current equal or higher than your device's charger specification.

The output of any power bank should be at least 5.0V and 2.0A, since most modern smart devices adopt this standard.

However, for charging safety, if your power bank keep rapidly heating up, do not hesitate unplugging it immediately because it can kill when it comes in contact with the owner.

Therefore, Blandine's untimely death could have been a result of overheating of the power bank.

Advice

Before you purchase a power bank, talk to your supplier about their product safety certifications before you buy it.