December 2011 Cellwatch Newsletter

Industries worldwide continue to realize the significance of protecting their mission critical facilities with Cellwatch battery monitoring solutions.

Partners, Thanks for Keeping Us on Target for 2011

Industries worldwide continue to realize the significance of protecting their mission critical facilities with Cellwatch battery monitoring solutions. We want to thank you for being a part of the Cellwatch success. This year many more companies began protecting their mission critical business systems and avoiding the risk of downtime due in large part to your hard work.

The need for reliable uptime is essential and we will continue to deliver advanced solutions to prevent unplanned outages and bring you peace of mind. Best wishes for a successful 2012.

–The team at NDSL

Follow NDSL on LinkedIn

Follow us on LinkedIn to keep up with the latest Cellwatch battery monitoring news and updates. Have you received good support from Cellwatch? Please take a moment to Recommend Us. Your input is valuable and will benefit other mission critical system managers. The Cellwatch community is growing every month and many of you are veteran Cellwatch users who can help spread the news about what Cellwatch has done for you.

Are You Missing Protection?

Your UPS and UPS batteries are an extremely important part of your infrastructure for ensuring power for mission critical applications; however, the UPS is only part of the comprehensive power solution. In many situations the generator, switchgear, and communications batteries are just as critical as UPS batteries and all are at risk of failure. Cellwatch offers a complete solution that provides protection for these other mission critical components – one system for all batteries. Click here to learn how easy it is to integrate all of your batteries into your existing Cellwatch system for 365 protection. If you already have a Cellwatch system you will be surprised at how easy and cost effective it is to add this additional protection.

Coming in the New Year

The new Cellwatch website is going live early 2012. We’ve improved the user experience with new content and dynamic graphics, enhanced navigation makes it easier to find the battery monitoring information you’re looking for, and robust interactive presentations demonstrate why Cellwatch is the world’s leading battery monitoring solution. Check back soon.

Tips to speed up any Cellwatch Installation

We are often asked how long it takes to perform a Cellwatch installation. The answer can vary depending on installer’s experience, site configurations, whether a plan exists for the installation, and obviously the number of people doing the work.

During a recent partner installation, NDSL employees timed how long it took to decommission 5 strings of DCMs and re-install and commission a Cellwatch system to a finished and fully functional state. Here is what we determined would ensure a swift and accurate installation:

1. We have proven over and over that training makes a great deal of difference. During a Cellwatch training class participants are taken through a number of troubleshooting exercises and are provided with tips to make the installation as smooth as possible. Systems installed by non-trained personnel are not warranted by NDSL so using trained installers is always the best practice to follow. A well-trained and experienced installer can reduce their installation time by 50% or more compared to untrained personnel. Remember training at our facility has no charge so contact us if you have new installers that need training.
2. Ensure that you have extra fiber optic cable and Dual Lock™ adhesives. Extra fiber optic cable allows you to work faster without worrying if you will have enough fiber optic cable to complete the installation. Enough fiber optic cable is provided to install a typical system, however, if the Control Unit is more than 20 feet from the string, we recommend you order extra. You can also purchase fiber optic cable in bulk from NDSL for large jobs. Pulling from a roll allows you to use exactly what you need with little or no waste. Extra Dual Lock allows a DCM to be repositioned if needed. Using a previously used piece of Dual Lock compromises the integrity of the adhesive resulting in a DCM that could fall off. Start with a fresh strip and a clean surface each time you attach a DCM.
3. Most importantly, have a plan. Each person can independently work on a single task or the group can work together to perform the same task. Either way, it is best to have a plan for what each person will do as the system is being installed. This becomes most important when working on more than one string at a time.
4. Always maintain safety as the number one goal when installing a Cellwatch system. Batteries can pose dangerous voltage and current situations if precautions are not taken to avoid them. Cellwatch is designed to make it easy to ensure your safety as long as you follow the procedures outlined in our training.

Using the practices outlined above for our timed installation, three well-trained technicians were able to complete 5 strings of 240 pre-tabbed cells in two days. That is roughly one string in under a half day for full DCM decommission (removal of DCM modules and fiber) and DCM installation (installation of DCM modules, dressing the wires, and new fiber optics). And yes they stopped for lunch each day. Following any installation you should verify the correct order of the DCM modules and the proper alarm settings. For the 5-string project the team took an additional half day to complete a thorough diagnostic and verification process. Click here for more information and a schedule of our upcoming training programs.

Cellwatch and the environment

We often think about Cellwatch in the context of mission critical protection, and rightfully so. I don’t believe many of our customers would purchase Cellwatch if it didn’t afford them protection against failing batteries and help them avoid load loss. But did you know that Cellwatch can also help protect the environment?

Where Cellwatch is used, customers often perform fewer preventive maintenance (PM) procedures. These are often conducted by outside companies who travel to the site to conduct their test. With Cellwatch these trips can be reduced and many of them completely avoided. In a typical application where PMs are conducted quarterly, you can expect to reduce the CO2 footprint by 36 to 48 pounds per site visited. In addition, battery support technicians are often dispatched to a site to examine the status of the battery, and to determine the cause of an alarm or fault condition. With Cellwatch these trips can also be significantly reduced. While this seems small, if you have many remote locations or the travel is longer, you can expect reductions to exceed several times the conservative estimate cited above. Total potential savings per site could amount to well over 100 pounds of CO2 for a typical Cellwatch installation.

Another significant environmental benefit of using Cellwatch is the value of battery life extension. Longer battery life means less replacement batteries and fewer recycle intervals are required. While many components of lead acid batteries are recyclable they are not 100% recyclable. Fortunately, almost all of the lead plates and plastic casing is recycled. However, according to engineering consultant and solution provider Gravita Exim Ltd, while over 98% of the lead in a battery is recycled, of the total weight of the used battery, only about 55%-62% of the total mass is recycled in the process. Beyond these recycling by-products, it is estimated that on average globally over 5% of all batteries are not recycled.

These are just two of the ways using Cellwatch helps reinforce your commitment to protect resources and to do your part to reduce waste.