In this episode Allen hosts Pete DeMar, who has over 50 years of experience in the stationary battery industry, shared his background and expertise in battery failure analysis. Al Warner, with a history of involvement in batteries since his time on the farm, shared his experiences in the military and the UPS industry, highlighting his learning journey and continued interest in battery maintenance.

Episode Highlights

4:53 – I was, I guess, the whistleblower for VRLA batteries. I had, the main manufacturer at the time come to my location and had a battery assembled for them. I showed them every problem that they have with them. So IEEE came out with a document called IEEE 1188, and that became the standard for maintenance of VRLA batteries.

11:56 – UPS batteries are the heart of the UPS system. If you don't have a battery, it's not uninterruptible so battery maintenance is critical.

22:28 – Control algorithms that monitor the batteries kind of put the customer to sleep believing that the UPS is going to give them a warning before it fails, but that doesn't always happen.

22:28 – A brownout is where the utility lowers the voltage so they can provide for a few more customers and then there's of course the famous blackout and rolling blackouts.

29:24 – A totally separate problem that we have not actually discussed is, there are two things and one of those is, with large UPSs and DC battery systems, the arc flash calculations, they are way off.

49:35 – They're relying on the electronics to Safely take care of their batteries. Same thing is true with UPSs. They rely on the electronics and no inspection It's out of mind, out of sight.

In this episode of DC Power Hour, Allen along with special guests Al Warner and Fran Losey discuss how AI growth, along with data center growth and the required electrification, affect the powering infrastructure.

Episode Highlights

6:03 – Do you agree with me when I say that the politicians are those that try to enforce these laws or make the suggestions?

3:57 – It's critical that people who have our level of experience speak out when we see a need for the younger generation to understand what we've went through. We've learned a lot of lessons. In the power industry and being able to communicate those. And today's topic is probably near and dear to my heart.

10:32 – The number one lesson that I took away from the National Power Lapse study was that before the actual outage, where the power just goes to zero, there's usually a voltage sag and power supplies traditionally are designed to withstand a certain amount of voltage sag and outage.

16:06 – A brownout is where the utility lowers the voltage so they can provide for a few more customers and then there's of course the famous blackout and rolling blackouts.

19:51 – The reality of today's grid, which needs a massive upgrade, as we've said before, is it needs to be redesigned because the whole backbone of the US grid is the problem.

31:46 – We had a crew come to our, our property and they were trimming the limbs. I said take these down because they're going to be a problem and the guy said, no they don't pay me to do that. The next year we had limbs from those trees hanging on our power line and we had an outage.

In this episode of DC Power Hour, Allen along with special guests Al Warner and Fran Losey discuss how AI growth, along with data center growth and the required electrification, affect the powering infrastructure.

Episode Highlights

6:03 – Do you agree with me when I say that the politicians are those that try to enforce these laws or make the suggestions?

10:42 – What do you see happening in some of those big data centers you work in?

17:17 – Do you know the rack requirements for hyperscale deployments are 10 to 14kW per rack in existing data centers, and they're estimating this is going to rise to 40 to 60kW rack?

27:33 – Question: I got three strings in parallel, I lose 1 string, what's my run time? And everybody will say 2/3rds. Answer: Not even close!

32:09 – Who has the most experience with micro-nuclear plants? The United States Navy. If we can power aircraft carriers, we can power cities with these plants.

In the latest episode of DC Power Hour, Dave Neubert recaps the BATTCON conference in Miami with the Battery Blarney duo, George and Allen. Allen, a founder and Hall of Fame member, discusses the history of BATTCON, which began to address negative press around VRLA batteries by fostering dialogue among industry stakeholders. Despite Allen's absence this year, George highlights key presentations and international participation, underscoring BATTCON's importance as a leading stationary battery conference.

Episode Highlights

3:28 – It started off with the presentation by Curtis Ashton, the current chair of the committee, the job you held for many, many years Allen.

11:30 – There was a lot of focus from the floor on battery safety.

31:04 – In some of the very large telecommunications applications, particularly places like the cable companies, they were seeing instability on the 48 volt bus, and I mean real instability.

37:27 – I know from my own training requirements here, a basic standard like PRC 005, there is a lack of understanding at the level with the people who are doing it.

In this episode of DC Power Hour, the Battery Blarney duo of George and Allen, along with our resident load bank technician and engineer Josh Fox, delve into the intricacies of load testing and load banks. They emphasize the critical importance of load testing in assessing battery capacity and highlight challenges faced by utilities in allocating manpower for comprehensive testing. The conversation explores IEEE and NERC standards for load testing, including acceptance tests and modified performance tests, and offers practical insights from field experiences. The hosts conclude by discussing strategies like cell jumping and the necessity of adjusting charger voltages, providing valuable tips for professionals in battery maintenance.

Episode Highlights:

4:59 – A common question I get is "why do we have to do a test for eight hours?"

9:41 – When you're recharging the battery, you're shoving maximum current in into it. Depending on the design of the power system, you could be shoving two or three hundred amps into that battery.

20:23 – There's also a couple of excellent papers on load testing itself. One by, I'll give a plug here, one by an old friend of mine and yours, Rick Tresler. And Another one by I believe it was Steve Clark on rate adjusted method.

22:11 – You're putting yourself at risk because you're working on 120 volts with a lot of current around, and you're putting the system at risk if you get it wrong.

49:14 – Are there certain pitfalls or certain things that people need to worry about in order to do a discharge test correctly?

For this episode of DC Power Hour, we brought in another expert who’s powerful in his field, Marketing Guru Jay Schwedelson. Jay joins one of the Battery Blarney brothers, Allen Byrne, for a conversation across industries on generating demand by offering authentic and FREE thought leadership. Comparing the value of being a source of authoritative content in Marketing vs. the DC Power industry, we discuss the importance of providing our audiences educational information. We also have some fun discussing the inherent need for reliable power across all industries as well as the value of mindless reality television to decompress at the end of the day and make us all feel better our lives.

Episode Highlights:

4:59 – The path to success is not having an agenda. Sharing your industry knowledge, whatever industry that you're in, putting it out there and not saying, hey, do this.

9:35 – When the powers out, you can still use your cell phone. Do you ever think why?

13:17 – So Jay, we wanted to have a little fun here and we've got this subject line challenge that we've been incorporating and wanted to see if you could weigh in.

17:49 – It's good that you guys are testing all this stuff. A lot of people, especially in the business to business marketing world, they're afraid to go as far as you guys are going but it's great to see that you are! 

25:52 – I was thinking about what question do I have? I guess what I'm curious about, I'm always curious about this in any business.  I want to know what is, what's a bad day in your industry?

In this episode of DC Power Hour, the Battery Blarney Duo delve into the topic of ground fault testing, welcoming special guest Ron who shares his experiences with ground faults on his installations. They discuss the nuances of ground faults, distinguishing them from short circuits, and explore techniques to mitigate issues such as corrosion in the telecom industry.

Episode Highlights:

8:03 – One of the big benefits of an ungrounded system and, or a floating system is the safety aspect of we can work on the batteries safely or work on instrumentation in the field without worry about getting shocked unless the system is in a ground fault.

13:14 – You have a short sleeved shirt on, your elbow catches the ground when you're touching the wrong piece of the battery, I speak from experience on that one.

21:28 – We assumed that the the ground fault was someplace along the cable, which was not a happy thing to think about, trying to trace that, which whereabouts in the cable would it be?

24:53 – What happens if you can't find the ground fault?

33:40 – We're in a commercial world and the battery is not a revenue generator so tends to get overlooked.

In this episode, the Battery Blarney Duo chats with charger specialist Lucas Berndt on the history and advantages of switch mode, convection-cooled rectifier technology. They discuss its benefits across applications and the importance of chargers regarding overall battery and DC system performance. Finally, they discuss the redundancy and continuity testing required for NERC TPL-001-5 compliance and how Eagle Eye's BC-2500 meets this important standard.

Episode Highlights:

2:54 – How did switch mode rectifiers come about?

9:30 – Those were kind of the initial drivers of it, looking for not only more compact technology, but the one that that steps out.

16:16 – The other thing was to do with another mandate, TPL, 001, not only monthly, but they have to have built in redundancy.

18:22 – PRC 005, which is the first of the mandates that come out really just established a defined level of maintenance that was required.

44:26 – I'll ask the question. We've got where we are now, good chargers, good batteries, what's the biggest challenge?

Listen in this episode of DC Power Hour as our battery Blarney duo of George and Allen welcome George Turner, another industry veteran who recently joined Eagle Eye as an advisor/EEU instructor. They discuss and recollect the evolution of batteries over the span of their careers.

Episode Highlights:

0:59 – I (George Turner) started in the battery industry in 1985 with Johnson controls and at that time they they manufactured flooded batteries.

4:28 – It was pretty rapid change for a stoic industry like ours. There were a couple of drivers, I think that one was the development of control ferro rectifiers, which were replacing the the SCR.

9:07 – There's another concern we had as well. That was the regulation and filtering had to be much better, but it didn't have that great big capacitor sitting at the end of the rectifier, acting basically as a battery eliminator.

17:13 – One of the shortfalls of AGM is that there's not good contact between the electrolyte and the case. So it causes problems with heat dissipation, but with the gelled AGM the gel was in contact with the case and made for greater heat dissipation.

49:31 – So the battery evolution over the last 50 years has improved dramatically. Quality levels are much better than what they were. Valve regulated is the way of the future, but there will always be a flooded battery systems as well.

Listen in this episode of DC Power Hour as our battery Blarney duo of George and Allen field questions from Doug on our sales team. They discuss topics ranging from seismic racking to spill containment and neutralization to chargers.

Episode Highlights:

1:57 – What are the seismic and UBC zones and how have they changed over time?

7:40 – If you put the spacers in, you've just got rid of half the airflow that's necessary to keep the battery cool.

9:46 – What are the pros and cons of Stevrofoam sheets vs corrugated PVCs in regards to airflow for the racks?

14:10 – Spill containment, is it recommended for VRLA purviews?

19:35 – Does the spill containment count as a neutralization kit?