Challenge

In an Oil marketing company automation, fire station engines, gensets and other critical equipment were backed by 400+ batteries. As a safety measure, the oil marketing company used to measure battery status manually, for each of the 400+ batteries.

However, it was difficult to depend o this process for running of such a large installation. earth-pit, using manual process, at half yearly intervals. Apart fron this, time-based maintenance (mainly replacement) and OEM’s recommendation were used in their previous maintenance strategy.

Solution

To solve these issues, Vadict conceived an IIoT solution, which consisted of Online battery health monitoring system has been designed to capture key battery parameters to assess its health. Sensors are installed for each battery and for each string; battery sensors provide voltage, resistance, state of charge, state of health, and temperature. String sensors provide current, string voltage, state of charge (which is the lowest state of charge of the battery within that string). Internal resistance defines battery’s capability to handle load, and it also characterizes its state of health. Above-mentioned parameters are used to estimate health and charge state of an individual battery or a battery pack.

Data is processed at edge computing device, located at site

Edge device reports exceptions to the Vadict cloud platform

Benefits

The oil marketing company derived following benefits from the solution:

Real-time battery health monitoring for plant safety

Early indication of battery degradation for optimal scheduling and planning

Identify bad batteries in a battery bank

Availability of parameters like cell unbalance and RUL for better and informed decision on maintenance

Avoidance of early (time-based) replacement of healthy batteries, and hence, cost saving.