Now, guaranteed backup power for retailers

Now, guaranteed backup power for retailers

No more abandoned trolleys and security issues when grid power fails

By Jack Ward, MD of Powermode

Last month, Powermode launched what we believe is a ‘first’ for the South African power provisioning market; a comprehensive three-year guarantee for our Q-on LR (Long Run) Battery Pack designed to complement our popular Q-On range of uninterruptible power supply (UPS) systems.

Now, we’ve taken another step forward and included this ‘smart’, technology-monitored battery pack in our recently launched Q-on PosPower, a specialised UPS system targeted at retail outlets where check-out counter operation - including cash registers, tag scanners, card readers, receipt printers and emergency lighting - is key to minimising lost trading hours.

Shoppers abandoning their trolleys and leaving the store during the often lengthy wait in darkness and security issues are among the biggest concerns facing this sector.

In many retail outlets noisy petrol- or diesel-powered generators are not permitted or are impossible to be installed. So when conventional UPS systems are harnessed to provide standby power for the two to four hours required to deal with routine load shedding, one of the Achilles heels of these devices is soon exposed.

This is the shortened lifespan of regular lead-acid batteries - including deep-cycle batteries - when subjected to full depletion on a regular basis. These batteries are intended to be part of a backup support infrastructure for sensitive equipment such as computers, medical and telecommunications equipment for brief periods of time – between five and 15 minutes. During this time diesel generators would normally take over or operators would be expected to save open files and execute a safe power-down.

A period of load shedding, which may extend to four hours or more, can fully deplete a battery pack. If repeated often enough, the batteries’ life can be severely compromised – reduced to around six months or less in many cases.

Underpinning Powermode’s money-back guarantee is the smart technology built into our Q-on LR Battery Pack which is sized according to load. The pack includes a battery charger with a computerised battery balancing harness that automatically reports - via the Internet and a ‘cloud-based’ portal to the Powermode control room - on a wide range of parameters associated with individual batteries in the pack.

Here we monitor data streams containing information critical to the well-being of individual batteries, including temperature, state of charge and depth of discharge. We keep a tally of the number of discharge/charge cycles.

Powermode will provide real-time management and regular servicing of a Q-on LR Battery Pack, no matter where it is sited country-wide thanks to our nation-wide support footprint. Should an individual battery’s performance not meet design specifications or fail for any reason it will be replaced immediately in terms of our guarantee.

At Powermode we believe the key to battery longevity lies in a thorough understanding of the status of individual batteries in a multi-battery pack in terms of their duty cycles and load factors.

The technology incorporated in the management of the battery pack not only distributes and balances the battery load, discharge and charge regimes across all batteries but takes steps to ensure that no battery is compromised through over-cycling or a malfunction of any kind.

Find us:

  

www.powermode.co.za