History

At the start of the 1980s work was undertaken to use microprocessors to determine and track lead acid battery performance throughout the life of a battery. At that time, this state-of-the-art technique was utilized to allow marine personnel to determine battery condition and energy remaining during long sea voyages.



The military saw many mission critical applications in this technology and took an interest in the company’s design capability.  This encouraged NDSL to create a rugged product, designed specifically for harsh environments, which used sophisticated algorithms to predict the mission life of a set of lead acid batteries even when they were degraded by use, wear and tear or temperature.

In the early 1990s NDSL turned to concentrate specifically on battery performance monitoring and while the company continued to supply the military with products, it began to grow into the industrial sector using its hitherto unheard of levels of innovation in the marketplace.

These years of research and development culminated in 1996 with the launch of Cellwatch, which brought the industrial and military world a fresh concept in battery monitoring systems. Its modular construction and use of optical fiber links freed it from the cumbersome, time consuming, and problem fraught wiring harnesses common to battery monitoring systems at that time. Cellwatch was the first battery monitoring system to be sold which used a PC running the Microsoft Windows operating system as its primary intelligence.

Cellwatch has continued to steadily grow and develop its product line during the ensuing years, building on the simplicity and backward compatibility of its modular format. This principal of interchangeability of parts has allowed each independent module type to be carefully honed and perfected, ensuring unprecedented system reliability over the years.

As a result of its product quality and advanced capabilities, Cellwatch continues to this day to be the leader in battery monitoring, offering such features as:

• Ultra-light modular pulsed load filtering (ULPLF) measurement technique: allowing once a day measurement for maximum visibility with minimum battery stress.
• “On battery” modular location: allows the user  to locate the exact cell or jar under investigation by LED and buzzer.
• Generator start and auxiliary battery monitoring capability: closing the loop on the UPS battery circle, as the generator battery is so often forgotten.
• Multi voltage measuring capability: One Cellwatch system is capable of simultaneously monitoring 2,4,6,8 and 12 volt jars.
  

Industry

From pharmaceutical corporations to petro-chemical processing plants, taking in silicon wafer fabs on the way, Cellwatch is overseeing the standby power requirements of hi-tech industry today. Plant and site managers, under ever increasing profitability pressures, are more and more unwilling to allow offline discharge testing of batteries, thereby jeopardizing the integrity of the standby power. Increasingly facilities engineers have little or no idea as to the likely performance of process control and emergency/safety power supplies. Cellwatch gives them visibility of cell condition and likely failure threats.

Telecommunications

Life today is unimaginable without telephone, e-mail, computer data transfer, Internet access and of course, cable TV.  Telecommunications depends on electrical power and as we go further into the 21st century we increasingly rely on wireless and broadband systems. These systems, in turn, rely more and more on uncabled power for repeater stations.

The source of this uncabled power may be from solar energy or from fossil fuels. But whatever primary source is used, batteries are used somewhere in the power chain to store electricity.

"In this industry UPTIME IS CRITICAL!"

Cellwatch's highly adaptive open architecture allows system developers to access battery data across global networks. Easily programmable alarm functions can be used to alert crews of a cell failure and services can be restored quickly and cost effectively.

Cellwatch is used in both the cellular/mobile telephone and the satellite broadcasting industries as well as a number of British Telecom sites in the UK.

Utilities

In May 1998 a workman cut through an electric feed cable leading to the Dounreay Nuclear Power plant in Scotland. The particular power feed supplied electricity to the ventilators which cooled radioactive rods. This accident resulted in the plant being evacuated. Power outages affect power companies as well as other utilities every day.

In the USA, the Georgia Power Company's Plant Hatch Nuclear facility at Baxley, GA relies on 24 hour, 365 day battery monitoring for support of its mission critical applications. It does so along with Duke Power, Florida Power Co. Carolina Power & Light and the TVA/Sequoyah nuclear plant in Tennessee to name but a few.

Automotive Research

From early days of NDSL's existence, we have been involved in developing monitoring systems for experimental electric vehicles. We were involved in the LA car project in the late 1980s and more recently have been involved in a UK private initiative.

NDSL invites inquiries from any organization involved in the use of stored electrical power for whatever purpose. All inquiries will be treated in the strictest confidence and will be dealt with under confidentiality agreements as required. Please contact either our UK or our USA sales office.