Backup Power Supply Maintenance
Regularly testing your stationary batteries to ensure they are operating completely and correctly is an essential step in critical backup power supply maintenance. During extreme weather conditions, natural disasters, or emergencies, your critical backup power system is relied on to perform consistently. Conducting routine stationary battery tests ensures your critical backup power will be ready and verifies it will function properly, avoiding catastrophic potential failures otherwise.
How Often Should Stationary Batteries Be Tested?
As a general best practice, stationary batteries should be tested between every six months to once per year. How often you test your critical backup stationary batteries depends on several factors including:
- Battery usage (backup power vs full time power supply)
- Temperature of the environment (extreme temperatures will draw more power from the battery)
- Age of the battery
As stated above, stationary batteries in your critical backup systems are your last option of power supply that is depended on during emergency situations. Regular battery maintenance and capacity testing reveal any performance issues in which battery power access could be compromised, limited, or halted. Failure to regularly test your stationary batteries in critical backup power equipment may result in:
- Critical equipment failure
- Equipment operating inefficiently, slowly, or not at all
- Increased cost due to more power being drawn to compensate for ineffective battery performance
- Safety and physical danger risks increase to people and equipment due to battery failure
At RedHawk Services, our team of experts offers battery and charger services to test your stationary batteries to find any issues beforehand, ensuring they are ready to be used in an emergency situation. We will partner with you to detail any battery performance shortcomings and provide solutions so your batteries continue to meet operational and industry standards.
Capacity Testing
Our trained technicians utilize capacity testing to determine if your stationary batteries are functioning properly. For a variety of reasons, batteries lose capacity over time. Determining a battery’s true capacity cannot be accomplished by simply measuring the voltage of the battery or its cells, even under load conditions. The only reliable method of determining battery capacity is to measure the time the battery takes to discharge into a known load.
Our technicians are specially trained and adhere to all safety and industry standards during the battery capacity testing process. We follow 450 IEEE standards for the testing and replacement of vented lead-acid stationary batteries used in critical backup power applications, 1188 IEEE standards for the testing and replacement of valve-regulated lead-acid (VRLA) stationary batteries, and 1106 IEEE standards for the testing, replacement, and maintenance of vented nickel-cadmium stationary batteries.
Ensure Batteries Are Operable
Our technicians thoroughly test your stationary batteries and provide a full report of their findings, along with any problems or deficiencies that may impact battery and equipment performance so you can take steps to ensure your batteries are operable in critical backup power applications.
The importance of scheduling regular stationary battery and charger services cannot be overstated. In an emergency, you need to be able to rely on your critical backup power systems to function properly, with stationary batteries operating at full capacity. RedHawk Services is here to ensure you are prepared to face your next unexpected critical backup power need.
