Patent ID: 7538519

Claim:
A battery coupled to an electrical device via a positive and negative battery terminals, the battery comprising: a cell stack operable to store a charge received through the battery terminals from the device; a sense resistor for measuring a current through the cell stack, wherein the sense resistor is electrically coupled to the stack; a ground switch coupled in series with a negative line of the cell stack and the negative battery terminal and operable to control the current; and a controller operable to control the ground switch in response to receiving an input indicative of the current, wherein the ground switch is operable to interrupt the current to the device in response to a transient failure event causing the current to be greater than a predefined value during a portion of a predefined time interval, and to enable the current to the device in response to a removal of the transient failure event causing the current to fail to be higher than the predefined value during another portion of the predefined time interval.