An Innovative Catamaran Design using Abertax Online Battery Management.

An Innovative Catamaran Design using Abertax  Online Battery Management.

Following the success of the traditional electric boat, a team of experts from the University supported by Abertax , designed and built a Solar Catamaran. Professor Joseph Cilia who forms part of the Department of Industrial Electrical Power Conversion at the Faculty of Engineering, University of Malta, is in charge of this project which is being sponsored by a number of interested parties.  

The Catamaran is designed to run from Solar Energy . It has  a Fuel Cell on board that  assists the Photovoltaic Energy in the case of cloudy weather. The catamaran is powered by 6 High Quality Photovoltaic panels supplied by IBC Solar.  Two sets of  24V 100Ahr batteries are used for storage of energy. The Abertax online battery management unit, which was presented at the ELBC conference in Istanbul last September, is here used, to manage and ensure that battery energy is available to keep the boat running at all times. Apart from the necessary battery information, it also provides the position via a GPRS signal to the internet. This patent pending technology, is a very useful tool and will be used to study the performance of the catamaran while running. It is also intended to incorporate an autopilot in the future.

This project is still in progress and during this year the catamaran performance will be tested and the results will be published. For further details or sponsorship please contact Professor Joseph Cilia below.

TQM Research Project

Professor Joseph Cilia  (Project leader)

Professor Charles Pule    

Mr Charles Azzopardi  (Project manager)

Ing KD Merz

Ing Malcolm  Tabone

Ing Ian Busutil

Mr Donald Cassar

Contact:

Email:  j.cilia@abertax.com / jcilia@eng.um.edu.mt

Mob:    00356 99252393

Online Battery Monitor

State-of-the-art-wireless technology for cost-cutting operation and provide a quality service. Opens new opportunities in material handling applications. Saves cost up to 20%.

One major drawback in battery operating equipment has always been “The capital cost of the battery and related guarantee issues” apart from the onsite maintenance that can be reduced drastically with suitable battery management systems. In addition these allow rental or leasing concepts whereby the rental costs are based on used energy.

Abertax Technologies Ltd. is the specialist when it comes to Battery Management Systems. Almost 25 year field experience resulted in very precise algorithms for accurate calculation of the energy balance taking into consideration all influencing factors such as temperature, deep discharge, overcharge etc. and is now able to introduce the ideal Battery Management System for this new and commercially very attractive option in the material handling business.

The main functions of this system are;

•      Battery control with alarm functions 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 time

•      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

•      Fleet management

The latest innovation is a major step towards the ability to “Sell Energy – Not Battery “. The Online Battery Monitor provides the necessary data on the desktop of any computer at any time at any location. The design has been concentrated on the concept of “let the battery speak independently”, and for this reason, mobile communication through GPRS was selected as the direct link between the battery and internet.

The main advantages of Online Battery Monitor are:

•      Availability from any place in the world

•      Information access at any time

•      Saves driving costs (CO2 friendly)

•      Complex data analysm for service and warranty

•      needs no hardware installation on site

•      can be easily installed on any battery in a couple of minutes

It is very clear that a battery will perform better in all motive power applications if a Battery Management System is used. This small upfront investment is more than worth it, when looking at the advantages gained. The idea of transferring data via mobile telephony has made the battery independent and 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. With similar bills received on all other service we use daily, such as the mobile phone itself, Abertax Technologies Ltd. strongly believe that customers will accept or expect this in the future !

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