Everybody always thought that anybody can put a battery in. What a lotta people don’t realize is that batteries are fragile pieces of equipment. But heavy.
The most common aspect is, the human nature is, you pick up something heavy, and you think, “Oh, this is strong.” Well a battery bank is not. So when you’re carrying in a battery, and we’ve seen this time and time again where clients have had different companies or electrical companies or what have you put in a battery bank, even electricians. And they may bump a corner of a jar, or they may put the battery down on a rock, or they drop it on the rack because it’s heavy for the guy. And what that does is that does premature failures of the battery.
Either the plates start to fail, because they’ve been jarred. Or there’s bruising on the jar that then eventually starts to leak. There’s all kinds of applications that can cause errors just by having the improper people go in and do the service. The other thing that we find is, when you put a battery bank in, we follow the manuals and we follow the IEEE and we follow the manufacturer’s recommendations. And part of that is, by having a technician that actually does the battery properly, the washers are put on properly so it’s not biting into the lead coating on the bars.
To the tin plating on the bars. To having the batteries torqued properly, a lotta companies don’t have the proper torque wrench to actually torque a battery because it’s inch pounds, not foot pounds. We’ve had battery banks where people have torqued a battery using foot pounds. And thinking it’s in inch pounds. We’ve had companies put battery banks with batteries in reverse to each other.
We’ve had all kinds of applications, we’ve had customers where they’ve shorted another battery together with another battery. All kinds of applications, so, you really wanna have a good technician, a person that has a lot of experience with batteries, do the battery install for you. ‘Cause, after all, you could be buyin’ an $85,000 battery bank. You don’t want to have just average Joe put that battery bank in.
If it’s designed for 20 years, you wanna have somebody that is going to put that battery bank in, and be around in 20 years to cover the warranty on any install as well. So a lotta people don’t take that in consideration, you wanna have a good technician. You wanna have somebody that has the right tools for the job. That knows what the tool is telling them.
So even if it’s an impedance test, a lotta people don’t understand what to look for. It’s a trending tool, but you wanna to be able to trend it, but you also wanna look and see what’s going on. Or, maybe, that person isn’t holding the meter hard enough on the leads to… All these things, you need somebody that is gonna to know what they’re lookin’ for for. You need somebody that’s gonna to be looking inside the battery, looking at the physical of the battery not just taking a voltage reading.
You wanna see if the plates are startin’ to fall apart, if it has a clear jar, to racking, to sulfating, to you name it, see if the battery’s active. you need to have a technician that has this experience, that has that knowledge to then give you, the client, the benefit of knowing, is that battery gonna last next year? Is that battery gonna last a week? Is it gonna last five more years?
And that’s why you wanna have somebody good out there to tell you, because, you make sure that you’re secure with your product, and the backup’s gonna last, and your device, your plant is gonna keep operating when the power goes out.
This article is a transcript of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADLF93n1J3s&feature=youtu.be on YouTube.
