Positive lead-acid plates with high porosity and surface area, aiming to deliver a very high current density, about 1 A/cm(2), were developed. The high porosity and surface area were achieved by using a combination of fine particles of lead oxide and/or basic lead sulfates with an adequate amount of persulfate and water. The relationship between the positive paste phase composition and the high rate performance of the plate was studied. The highly porous plate is able to deliver a very high current owing to more acid being available in the plate structure. In the low rate applications when acid diffusion from the bulk becomes the limiting factor, the high-performance plate is not more advantageous than the conventional starting, lighting and ignition (SLI) plates. The cycle life of the high-performance plate is sensitive to depth of discharge. The deep discharge high rate capacity of the high-performance plates falls faster than that of the SLI plate. Nevertheless, the high-performance paste delivers at least 30% more energy, either to the same depth of discharge per cycle or for the entire service life with constant capacity removal in each cycle. One failure mode of the high-performance plates is the change of material morphology during deep discharge cycling, which results in material shedding.