Battery Monitoring

Batscan - an advanced monitoring system for backup power batteries.

Batteries are being used in many different areas as an alternate power source in the unlucky event of an power outage in the public power grid. In facilities such as hospitals or airports, power failure of the support system could be fatal. Since many companies and organizations are depending on a reliable power supply, a sudden loss of power can cause large problems and unnecessary high costs.

All batteries are aging and needs to be replaced after a period of time, but they can also fail from a variety of reasons during their normal life span. Therefore it is necessary to monitor the batteries so that a faulty cell can be detected and repaired before it jeopardizes the reliability of the whole battery. If you replace the batteries too soon it can generate unnecessary costs and a negative impact on the environment.

Batscan continuously monitors each individual cell in the batteries. If a measured value differs from normal an alarm will be triggered and actions to correct the problem can be taken immediately. This way the battery can always be kept optimal condition, ready to supply power to the load – when necessary.

Batscan – When power failure is not an option.	This battery did not have Batscan installed.

Battery = linked cells

A Battery can be compared to a chain: The battery must be able to supply the load with enough current (Amp) and the chain must carry the weight of the load (kg).

An open cell in the battery is like a rusty link in the chain that eventually breaks, it doesn’t matter if the rest of the links are fine, the chain will be useless if just one link is broken.

Each cell in a lead/acid battery increases the voltage by 2V (Volt). The figure below shows a battery with 4 cells that gives 8V to the load.

An open cell will cause the voltage at the load to drop to 0V and all the battery voltage will instead appear over the faulty cell, -6V in this simple example.

In reality, a typical battery consists of 200 cells connected in series giving a total battery voltage of 400V. Such high voltage over a single cell would cause overheating and emission of explosive gases. With high risk of explosion!

Although all the other 198 cells (99%) are OK, the battery cannot give any voltage with one open cell. Often several cells in a battery need to be replaced every year.

With Batscan a faulty cell will be detected in an early stage, preventing the battery from being the cause of power failure.

Batscan Battery Monitoring System

+2.0V +2.0V +2.0V +2.0V

Check this box to "install" Battery Monitoring

 

 

 

+2V

0V

Ground Level

Load
100 Amp

Load
100 kg

Battery Voltage ↑

+8V

+6V

+4V

The load current passes through all
cells in the battery. If one cell breaks
the whole battery will collapse.