INTERNET BATTERY MANAGEMENT

PROFILE: INTERNET BATTERY MANAGEMENT

Better battery management and monitoring could revolutionise the way we look at energy storage.



Charge for energy, not batteries



Would you buy a car without a fuel gauge? Or without a thermometer to measure engine temperature? Or meter to look at the mileage? Of course not. How on earth could you maintain your car in a healthy shape?

More to the point, would you sell such a product — and also offer a warranty of the car’s reliability! — to your customers? Because that’s the situation as it stands with the present business model we have for buying and selling batteries. The customer receives a battery, and related warranty, without any means to check that the battery will perform as required.

“The trouble is battery life is a function of usage and its environment,” says Klaus-Dieter Merz, a battery veteran having spent almost three decades with Exide (Sonnenschein) and now a vice president of Abertax Technologies.

“High discharge currents, high temperatures, deep discharges and low acid levels, can dramatically reduce battery life. Different operational conditions have a big impact on real battery life and the theoretical lifetime of 1200 cycles can be either higher or lower depending on the complete drive system design.

If the battery fails before its lifetime (warranty) there are always arguments between the customer and supplier on whether the battery was of low quality or the battery was abused during its use.

“This approach to business is out-dated,” says Merz.

It also looks irrelevant when you realise that the initial investment in the hardware of a battery and charger is only about a third of the overall operational cost in the service life of a battery. The other two thirds are equally shared between the energy cost and the service cost.

It is clear that a battery management unit is a vital piece of equipment in motive power applications.

Jospeh Cilia, a professor at the University of Malta, has spent most of his academic and business life looking at the issue. He is also the chief executive at Abertax. “As a firm we’re a specialist in such battery management,” he says. “We’ve almost 20 years’ field experience has resulted in precise algorithms for accurate calculation of the energy balance taking into consideration all influencing factors such as temperature, deep discharge, overcharge and the like.”

Abertax has two fully developed products suitable for all motive power applications. Both devices, the BMS (Battery Monitoring System) and the BMU (Battery Management Unit) are built in robust, acid proof plastic boxes (IP 66). Both can be enhanced with optional accessories to meet all requirements in motive power applications.

Long experience in battery data measurement in field applications has resulted in extensive battery data and algorithms that make the software in these systems one of the most precise and reliable in the market. The software designed is user-friendly and can be easily modified to suit particular customer needs. Both devices have the ability to measure necessary parameters like:

Temperature (battery and ambient);

Electrolyte level;

Half voltage; and,

Current.



The main advantages of these available systems are they are all:

Based on the same algorithm and are therefore precise and reliable;

Re-programmable and can be used for other batteries;

Enhanced with other features (fan, SOC indicator, charger control); and,

Adjustable to specific customer requirements



The main functions are:

Battery control with alarm function at high temperature, low acid level, deep discharge, etc;

Data measurement and storage of all battery data and operation conditions;

Calculation of battery energy, cycles, SOC and life;

Statistics of all data are stored in short and long term history;

Data transmission via RS232, USB or wireless;

Remote diagnosis and automatic failure alarm indications;

Calculation of energy consumption for rental and leasing service; and,

Fleet management.




Field experience has shown that while the above data is useful and welcomed by any service provider and customer, they are reluctant to go through the trouble of connecting to the device to get the data.

Basically, if data has to be read out near or directly on the vehicle, this consumes time and accessibility of the vehicle is not guaranteed. In most cases this is a cumbersome task. Moreover, the technicians who carry out routine battery maintenance are not usually expected to run around with a laptop.

However even if this is the case, wireless communication methods that were used so far, such as infrared, bluetooth, wifi, zigbee, etc have marked limitations and involve the customer’s infrastructure which cannot be guaranteed at all times. Therefore while everybody can see the advantages of having such a battery management unit, only a few decide to implement it due to its “offline” operation.

Abertax Technologies has designed Online Battery Management whereby the independent battery uses mobile communication through GPRS between the battery and the internet.

Although this is not the cheapest option of accessing the data it is the most reliable and ensures a quality service. Advances in mobile telephony mean that even third world countries can take advantage of these benefits.

The main advantages of Online Battery Management are:



available from any location;

24/7 availability;

saves driving cost (CO2 friendly);

needs no hardware installation on site; and,

can easily installed on any battery in a couple of minutes.



“This small upfront investment is more than worth the extra expense when looking at the advantages gained,” says Björn Mentzer, vice president for marketing at Abertax. “The idea of transferring data via mobile telephony has made the battery independent. This opens a wide range of new opportunities such as to charge for the energy and not the battery — something which could never be implemented before.

“Given that we already expect similar billing for other services, such as mobile phones and the like, Abertax Technologies strongly believe that customers will expect this in the future!”


http://www.abertax.com/uploads/media/E1002-01-BMU_brochure.pdf


QUOTE BOX

This opens a wide range of new opportunities such as to charge for the energy and not the battery — something which could never be implemented before