Technology

Sentry-NB8 has been chosen for many telecom carriers worldwide including recent order of 100 units from South Africa.

This unit has been tailored to cell towers or micro sites with 8 batteries, 2 strings of 4x12V. Separate harness goes to each string for quick and clean installation. Unit automatically accepts 1 or 2 current transducers so no surprise when come to a site for retrofitting.

It is more than a data collector for voltage, current, temperature and internal resistance. It faithfully processes the data and even with machine learning to achieve high accuracy estimation for SOH (state-of-health), SOC (state-of-charge), total runtime and remaining runtime, plus thermal risk level. Ethernet port provides remote web access to battery data and Modbus-TCP integration. Plug and play, compatible with MyBattery Platform to manage unlimited number of sites. (Really, 100,000+ sites on your big screen.)

Two dry contacts for urgent and service alarms. No more extra ports or functions. It is simple.

Most battery rooms with vented lead acid batteries present big challenges for battery monitoring equipment. Well maintained vented/flooded batteries will last for 20+ years, but battery monitoring equipment not specifically designed for the corrosive environment will not last, and will become an ongoing maintenance concern, if not a waste of money.

Without mentioning any products or brand names, the picture above shows a “well” installed battery monitoring system. The wiring and clips appear to be OK. However, the main unit has ventilation slots that expose its circuit board to the acid gas environment. An option would be to install the main unit to the other side of the wall, on which it is mounted, but that creates many other inconveniences.