Power to Deliver

As technology advances, each new step is considered more reliable and dependable than the last, however, banks have become reliant on a technology that has been in use for over 100 years.

If you are reading this at work, then it is likely your car got you to your work place without incident. It did as expected. It started, its on-board systems monitored the environment in the engine bay and inside the car itself, it kept the engine clean and efficient, and kept you cool or warm.

However complex and clever the modern car may be, it is still dependent on a technology that has remained practically unchanged for over 100 years. With increased power demand from the accessories we see as essential for our daily commute, it is still the humble lead acid battery chemistry which supplies the power, from the very first turn of the key to start the engine to powering the locks and alarm when we stop.

A new age of banking

Just as the car has developed in complexity, so have our places of business. Unlike a car, all banks have critical computers that must be kept running around the clock to handle and record transactions. Nearly all drivers know how inconvenient it is when a car fails to start, but imagine what happens to a business which handles trillions of dollars a day when one or more of its batteries does not work when required.

These days such occurrences make headline news as major corporations with household names disappear in a millisecond or millions of its customers can no longer withdraw cash from cash machines or gain access to online account information. The recovery time for a business from a situation like this is lengthy and expensive, involving lost revenue through transactions, time-consuming rebuilding of data and loss of future sales through bad press.

You may not be surprised to learn that there is equipment to prevent this from happening and, if it all works, the computer servers will never know there has been an interruption in the utility power. So what does this important equipment rely on for this instantaneous power? Yes, the very same battery technology you have in your car, the lead acid battery.

Critical mass

For this reason, major banks around the world have come to depend on the Cellwatch battery monitoring system to ensure their critical batteries will function when required. For 14 years Cellwatch has been eliminating unplanned outages through battery failure or thermal runaway while improving staff safety and making maintenance proactive.

As technology advances, banks are becoming even more reliant on this 100-year-old lead acid battery technology, and even though the chemistry of the lead acid battery has not changed, the technology for monitoring and determining its condition truly has.