Reduce battery diagnostic times by about 60%
Reduce battery diagnostic times by about 60%.
Significantly lower workload with fast, accurate measurement.
Featured customer
Company V offers equipment maintenance services. The company provides regular maintenance along with rapid response 24 hours a day and 365 days a year for facilities that are required to operate continuously, including equipment operated by communications providers and corporate datacenters run by IT service providers.
Background
Efficiently and accurately diagnosing deterioration in batteries used in uninterruptible power supplies
With datacenters that store confidential corporate information, communications facilities operated by communications providers, and infrastructure run by hospitals, banks, and other businesses, it’s essential to avoid power outages. Consequently, those facilities use uninterruptible power supplies (UPSs) to guard against unexpected failures. However, the lead-acid batteries that are often used in such systems deteriorate with repeated charging and recharging. Daily management of battery status in terms of the extent to which batteries have deteriorated is necessary in order to ensure the dependability of the electricity supply in the event of a grid outage.
Company V performs daily equipment maintenance on behalf of corporate clients in order to ensure that services offered by communications providers, hospitals, banks, and other businesses are not interrupted. The maintenance process includes inspections of UPS batteries, and that work has posed a number of challenges.
The first is poor work efficiency. Many customers are increasing the number of batteries they have, and some sites have more than 200. In order to ascertain each battery’s state in terms of deterioration, workers must measure its internal resistance and DC voltage and then make a PASS/FAIL judgment accordingly. Managing this regularly obtained measurement data required a large amount of time and imposed a heavy technician workload.
Measurement accuracy was also problematic. Due to the nature of the equipment in question, it cannot be powered down for inspections, which must be carried out while the equipment continues to operate. However, noise from inverters during equipment operation inevitably interfered with accurate measurement. Additionally, most facilities have numerous batteries packed into racks, requiring technicians to insert their hands inside the racks in order to measure batteries at the rear. Since more than 200 directly connected batteries have a voltage of several hundred volts, this work posed the risk of electric shock.
Key considerations that led the customer to choose Hioki
Earning praise for a new tester’s speed for battery diagnostics and simplified management functionality
Until several years ago, it was typical to replace UPS batteries en masse once the manufacturers’ warranty had lapsed. Communications providers, hospitals, and banks were spending large sums of money every few years to replace batteries. A battery tester from Hioki revolutionized this practice.
Portable testers capable of simultaneously measuring a battery’s internal resistance and voltage made it possible to diagnose individual batteries’ state of deterioration, allowing continued use of batteries with a low level of deterioration while batteries whose deterioration exceeded a certain level were replaced. This capability made it possible to optimize facility operation. Company V purchased this battery tester early on and proposed improvement measures to its customers, including ways to lower maintenance costs. The company has subsequently used battery testers from Hioki since they helped it build good relationships with its customers.
Company V recently considered purchasing new battery testers in order to further boost work efficiency, eliminate errors in the management of measurement data, realize accurate measurement that is not affected by noise, and improve worker safety. As a result, the company decided to purchase the Battery Tester BT3554, a latest model from Hioki.
The BT3554 offers overwhelming speed that allows it to measure internal resistance and voltage in about 2 seconds, along with functionality for saving measurement data in its internal memory and then sending it to a computer. The instrument also boasts high noise resistance, and its use of L-shaped pin-style leads improves worker safety. Company V offered high praise for these features.
Benefits
Streamlining battery diagnostic work and building management structures to facilitate predictive maintenance
The BT3554 starts measurement as soon as the test leads are placed in contact with a battery's terminals, and it can automatically save data once measured values have stabilized. Whereas it took about 5.3 seconds to measure one battery with the previous model, the BT3554 takes about 2 seconds. As a result, Company V has been able to shorten battery diagnostic testing times by about 60%, yielding a significant boost in the efficiency of such work.
Additionally, the BT3554 boasts high noise resistance, enabling stable measurement. Whereas accurate measurement was difficult until now due to the effects of noise from inverters and other equipment while the UPS being measured was operating, today such measurements can be made quickly. Furthermore, Company V purchased L-shaped pin-style leads out of consideration for the process of measuring batteries in confined locations. This decision served to improve worker safety.
The BT3554 includes a model with Bluetooth® wireless technology so that the instrument can be paired with a smartphone or tablet on which Hioki’s GENNECT Cross application has been installed, allowing automatically saved measurement data to be used to create reports in the field.
GENNECT Cross
GENNECT Cross
Those reports can then be sent immediately back to the office. GENNECT ONE, a desktop application that comes with the BT3554, allows users to assess trends in measurement data, from the past to the present.
GENNECT ONE
The BT3554 can be combined with GENNECT Cross and GENNECT ONE to allow users to view measurement data for any given battery over a period of time, from the past to the present, in graph form so that they can identify signs of deterioration. This capability allows users to transition from preventive maintenance, which is dedicated to preventing battery outages through regular maintenance, to predictive maintenance, in which batteries exhibiting signs of future issues are given priority in maintenance work. Company V, which is committed not only to offering equipment maintenance, but also to creating added value that is welcomed by its customers, is extremely pleased with how its purchase of Hioki battery testers has allowed it to prevent equipment problems caused by battery deterioration while lowering the total cost of maintenance.
Hioki is currently developing new functionality for future models, including audio guidance indicating which battery should be measured next and data management capability for linking measurement results with profile information such as locations and battery numbers. Company V has indicated that it plans to consider additional purchases once battery testers with the new functionality are available.
