May 2013 Newsletter

We are excited to announce that Cellwatch Battery Monitoring has been selected as a finalist for the Datacentre Management Product of the Year!

Help Shine the Light on Cellwatch!

We are excited to announce that Cellwatch Battery Monitoring has been selected as a FINALIST for the Datacentre Management Product of the Year! In a month, a single winner with the MOST VOTES will be selected from a short list of finalists.

Please help us take home the award by encouraging all partners, resellers, and Cellwatch end users to go to the website below and vote for Cellwatch. Your vote could make the difference!

Voting only takes a few quick steps and can be completed in about a minute.

  1. Click on this link – https://www.dcsawards.com/voting
    We’re under Datacentre Management Product of the Year
  2. Complete the short validation form (Please only use corporate email addresses. Yahoo and Gmail emails will not count as a vote)
  3. Click submit my vote! You’re a winner with Cellwatch and we’re hoping Cellwatch will be one too.

Every Vote Counts!

We would greatly appreciate your support! Cellwatch resellers please cast your vote and forward this email to encourage your customers to vote as well!

Voting is open until May 9th, and all Cellwatch partners and Cellwatch users are eligible to vote. Winners will be announced on May 23rd.

NDSL adds to Sales and Product Development Teams To Meet Ongoing Global Demand for Cellwatch Systems.

We’d like to introduce you to our newest team members. We’ve added a VP of Global Sales, Regional Sales Manager for New England and Canada, and additional sales support staff to better service our resellers and their customers. Additionally, several key engineering additions will advance our product development capabilities even further. Since many of you will eventually meet our customer-facing team members we have provided a short bio for the sales and support team members.

Jon Warren has joined NDSL as Vice President of Global Sales. Jon will play a significant role in contributing to our worldwide growth initiatives of NDSL and Cellwatch battery monitoring solutions.

Jon comes to NDSL with extensive experience in leading and growing sales organizations, with significant experience in data center and mission critical applications. Previously Jon was the Director of Key Accounts at Emerson Network Power (Liebert) where Jon led the integration between Chloride (his previous employer) and Emerson, and the development of growth strategies across the America’s. Jon achieved double digit vertical sales growth within both organizations, consistently leading his teams to surpass their sales objectives.

Prior to the acquisition of Chloride by Emerson Jon held multiple roles, including the Director of Sales and Business Development for Chloride North America. In this role, Jon developed and managed growth strategies focused on data center and mission critical applications, leading a team of regional sales managers, manufacturing reps, resellers, channel partners, and OEMs.

Jon has a B.S. in Engineering and an MBA in Global Management and is a former selectee for both the Leadership Development Programs at Chloride and Emerson. Jon’s energetic personality and consistently positive attitude combined with his professional accomplishments, industry relationships and knowledge of selling mission critical power products throughout the world, will allow him to adapt and effectively position Cellwatch for continued growth.

Bill Wolfe will be driving sales for the Northeastern US region and portions of Canada. We will also leverage his vast experience to help NDSL work into consulting and engineering firms throughout the US. We look to match the success the UK team has had training major engineering firms and getting our products specified early in the process.

Bill has a stellar reputation in the power quality industry. One of his reference suggested he was unquestionably a perfect fit for NDSL’s high performance reputation. He most recently worked with flywheel manufacturers like Vycon and Pentadyne. Prior to those companies he worked with familiar names like Toshiba International, Liebert Corporation, Active Power and On-Line Power. Bill is a powerful new addition to our already strong US sales team.

Janet Hunken is our new Operations and Logistics Administrator. Janet brings her background in customer service to this position and will serve as the primary logistical interface between NDSL and customers. Janet will handle incoming orders, sales and orders related questions, and prioritization of order fulfillment.

Cellwatch 4.0 Accelerates Alarm Management Process and Data Management for Time- and Cost-savings in Large Data Center Environments

We are seeing a lot of excitement around our recently released Cellwatch 4.0 software package. This new software version builds upon the foundation of our existing Cellwatch system, but we’ve added powerful new features for greater scalability and battery management.

We’ve been asked by a number of customers whether the new software is right for them. While your situation may vary from others here is a good summary of our response:

While we still plan to support older versions of Cellwatch you can expect Cellwatch 4.0 to help you extend the useful life even longer.

The new software manages all of the existing history data automatically.

Cellwatch 4.0 offers many new features that save you time and make your job easier.

If you have a large battery configuration you will find the new features greatly help you analyze the vast amount of data recorded by the Cellwatch system.

If you are an advanced Cellwatch user you will benefit from the enhancements for history graphing and alarm analysis tools.

Several new features ensure proper alarm setting, especially for the most critical parameters.

If you spend a great deal of time using Cellwatch this upgrade will save you a significant amount of time.

Visit www.cellwatch.com/cw4 for specific details about the enhancements and check out all the new features in the Cellwatch 4.0 videos – www.cellwatch.com/videos

All new Cellwatch systems ship with Cellwatch 4.0 installed. Customers currently running older versions of Cellwatch software can purchase an upgrade by contacting their Cellwatch reseller.

What’s your baseline?

The importance of a baseline measurement and properly setting up Cellwatch to verify battery health.

Baseline measurements are often taken within days after a string has been commissioned soon after the cells have had an initial recharge. Baseline measurements are valuable data points and should be retained over the life of a battery since they will be used as the reference standard to determine if battery jars are aging properly, or if a jar needs to be replaced.

Cellwatch can now automatically establish the ohmic value baseline by utilizing the “Auto Ohmic Set” feature. This feature takes the baseline reading and stores tailored individual ohmic alarm values for the Cellwatch system. Once these baseline readings are taken Cellwatch uses this baseline as a reference for all future Cellwatch measurements.

The baseline measurement tool is just as important as baseline measurement itself. Consistency in the measurement technique, tool and procedure are important to accurately analyze battery health. Different measuring methods cannot be compared to each other as the methods used to take the readings are inherently different. The results will also be different and cannot be accurately correlated. All battery measurement technology places a load on the monitored jars during the ohmic, impedance, inductance, or resistance scan or test. During a discharge, cells will respond differently at different sample in the coup de fouet depending on the load. Because of this it is not practical to compare two tools that sample readings at different points in a discharge curve – they will always result with dissimilar measurements. To get an accurate and reliable reading, it is critically important to measure with the same tool positioned at the same sample point, i.e. where load current, discharge time, and the sampling point(s) are the same.

By using the same tool for every measurement, like the data collection module (DCM) for instance, you can reliably compare the readings over time to determine if the cell is changing from its original baseline measurement. Using a DCM allows you to monitor for changes every day as compared to the infrequency of quarterly or yearly manual measurement testing with a handheld tester. Although both methods can tell you that a cell is no longer performing properly, only daily monitoring tells you the day the cell has gone outside of tolerance, allowing you to avoid placing the load at risk. Quarterly or annually handheld testing cannot provide such adequate insight.

The best method to help guarantee proper string health is to compare readings on a daily basis.