Standby battery longevity: It’s a clever balancing act

Standby battery longevity: It’s a clever balancing act

By Jack Ward, MD of Powermode

The frequency with which South Africans are experiencing electricity glitches in the form of power outages and interruptions is on the rise. With ‘load shedding’ off the table, according to officialdom, these challenges are now being passed off as ‘grid maintenance’. This emphasises the fragile nature of the national grid and the importance of standby power systems.

Unfortunately, the repetitive nature of unscheduled power outages has exposed one of the Achilles’ heels of standby power devices; the dramatically shortened lifespan of their batteries (including deep-cycle batteries) when subjected to full depletion on a regular basis.

Now, in a bid to prevent premature battery failure, Powermode is offering the Q-on Battery Balancing Harness to assist users improve battery longevity and save costs.

It 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 monitors data streams containing information critical to the well-being of individual batteries, including temperature, state of charge and depth of discharge. The tally of the number of discharge/ charge cycles is accurately recorded.

Using this data, the system’s battery performance is able to be balanced and equalised. Should an individual battery’s operating parameters not meet design specifications or fail for any reason the battery is flagged for replacement - thus ensuring the integrity of the pack.

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 Balancing 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.

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www.powermode.co.za