Backup battery monitoring: A ‘must’ for companies in rural areas

Backup battery monitoring: A ‘must’ for companies in rural areas

By Jack Ward, MD of Powermode

In last month’s blog, I mentioned that an increasing number of electricity users - many in rural areas - are experiencing regular power outages, not as a result of load-shedding, but now under the banner of ‘grid maintenance’.

It certainly appears as if electricity consumers in country areas have a harder time of it than us city-dwellers. This has emphasised the fragile nature of the national grid in these areas and the importance of standby power systems.

For companies, this can be a frustrating time. Should the electricity and backup system fail and the lights are out, Speedpoint credit card systems are inoperable and security systems crash, the chances are business will be negatively impacted.

Having stressed the value of regular inspections and adherence to service regimes to help minimise inconvenient standby system failures, it’s time to talk about one of the newest solutions on the market, ready to obviate untimely, costly failures: A 24 x 7 standby backup battery monitoring platform.

The prevalence of unscheduled power outages – often longer than four hours - has exposed one of the Achilles’ heels of standby power devices; the dramatically shortened lifespan of regular lead-acid batteries (including deep-cycle batteries) when subjected to full depletion on a regular basis.

Now, in a bid to prevent premature battery failure, we at Powermode have brought to market a purpose-designed battery and UPS system monitoring platform – the Q-on Management Harness - to assist users deal effectively with power unreliability.

We believe its use is even more important in rural areas were the necessary skills to service, support and repair standby power systems might be scarce - and costly if imported from the city.

The ‘smart’ battery technology in our Q-on Management Harness monitors and optimises the performance and efficiency of individual batteries in a battery pack on a 24x7 basis.

This is achieved by a dedicated, computerised battery balancing solution that automatically reports to Powermode’s Operations Centre - via a GSM cellular network - on a wide range of parameters associated with individual batteries in the pack.

Data streams containing information critical to the well-being of individual batteries, including temperature, state of charge and depth of discharge, are measured on a continual basis, while a tally of the number of discharge/ charge cycles is accurately recorded.

Your system’s battery performance can thus be balanced and equalised and should an individual battery’s operating parameters not meet design specifications or fail for any reason we’ll send an alert via sms or email. At the same time, we’ll flag the battery for replacement thus ensuring the integrity of the pack.

As we know, the key to battery longevity – and reduced maintenance - 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 featured in the Q-on Management Harness not only distributes and balances the battery load, discharge and charge regimes across all batteries in the pack on a minute-by-minute basis, but also takes steps to ensure that no battery is compromised through over-cycling or a malfunction of any kind.

Regular daily updates on battery health and the performance status of UPS systems – together with the number and duration of the outages that have been addressed - are sms’d or emailed to you, giving you an insight into your company’s power supply issues and an idea of how well your standby power budget is being spent.

Powermode customers who have installed the system find that regular power outages have minimal impact on their businesses. In fact, outages are now regarded as ‘non-events’.

Some of our users have taken to actively marketing their businesses as ‘standby power equipped’. They see power mitigation as a competitive advantage.

Please don’t forget that Powermode also markets the Q-on LR (long run) battery pack, which carries an unprecedented three year guarantee on its individual batteries. A ‘first’ for this industry in SA.

Find us:

  

www.powermode.co.za