The term “one size fits all” does not apply to continuous battery monitoring.  When you think about it, the concept stems from a manufacturer’s desire to optimize production and minimize inventories.  “One size fits all” was a brilliant marketing ploy to make it seem easy to choose one product to serve multiple needs. I suppose it can be made to work OK for apparel, such as hats, shirts, socks, and stretchy pants, but for any other market does it have any customer benefit?

Battery backup power comes in all shapes and sizes.  There are vast and significant differences between a utility substation and a data center, between a remote telecom site and railway.  Mix the industries any way you like, the differences remain significant.  Heck, even within a market like cell sites, battery cabinets, number of batteries, and number of strings can widely vary. And, that’s within the same shelter! And, these differences are not limited only to the battery number and configuration.  Environment, space, importance, and accessibility all play a part in implementing a continuous battery monitoring solution that is specifically designed for the application requirements.

So, why isn’t there a continuous battery monitoring solution that fits each of these markets?  Well, you know I’m going to tell that BatteryDAQ provides systems for every environment and configuration, right?  But first, I’ll directly answer the question.

A while ago, other continuous battery monitoring companies identified a viable and profitable UPS data center market, within the backup power marketplace, and focused their design on that specific application.  By doing so, they built their companies around a design that fit a finite number of configurations.  Even more, data centers have a fairly large number of batteries/strings dedicated to maintaining a very important asset: information.  If that information is lost…look out!  The cost of recovery adds up quickly, so the cost of insurance (battery monitoring) is more easily folded into operational costs.  Increasingly, data centers are expected to monitor their batteries and now tout their security and up-time among their strategic advantages.

Due to the similarities of data center needs, the continuous battery monitors designed for UPS applications had similar characteristics; overly large, lots of wires, difficult to install, hard to maintain, user-unfriendly data, and really expensive.

Now, if you began your company with that design as your core offering, where do you go from there?  What has come to pass is that the models built for the UPS marketplace have zero appeal to a large percentage of other markets.

Here comes the good part.  BatteryDAQ looked at the UPS marketplace and noticed it represented an extremely small piece of the overall battery backup pie.  Realizing this early on enabled BatteryDAQ to grow and develop by utilizing well-established technology incorporated into a line of equipment that has unparalleled design flexibility coupled with user-friendly, meaningful data.

As a result, BatteryDAQ Sentry Monitors are:
•    Compact
•    Rugged
•    Comprehensive – measure voltage, temperature, AND internal resistance
•    Accurate
•    Easy to install
•    Easy to work around
•    Easy to integrate
•    Easy to understand
•    Affordable

Here is the important point:  BatteryDAQ intentionally designed its solutions from the very beginning to be capable of servicing a very large percentage of industries that possess distinct battery configuration needs.  So, at its core, BatteryDAQ was built around flexibility.  It makes a profound difference.

Here is another important point:  All of this can be qualified.  Let’s talk.  Kick the tires.  We want to help.

Visit our website at www.batterydaq.com, or email me directly at tom.shannon@batterydaq.com.