Batteries and energy storage

Many compounds on this page begin with Lade- or Entlade-, and that short first element follows a rule. When German builds a compound on a verb, the verb goes in as its stem, and with laden and entladen the stem always takes an -e: der Ladezustand, die Ladeschlussspannung, die Entladetiefe, and the everyday das Ladegerät. Every one of them is about the act of charging or discharging. When the compound is built on the noun instead, the whole of die Ladung goes in, joined by an -s, and the word is now about the charge itself: der Ladungsträger is the particle that carries it, and die Ladungsmenge is how much of it there is. So a battery’s state of charge is always der Ladezustand, however logical another shape may look. Read the first element before the last: Lade- names the process, Ladungs- the thing being moved.