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U.S. PATENT 5635815 |
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XerGizer technology is reliable, cost-saving, and environmentally friendly. The XerGizer provides daily exercise for batteries while constantly monitoring the voltage. Should voltage drop beyond the limit during exercise, an alarm will be activated. Our equipment automatically manages batteries that sit idle for prolonged periods or in applications where they receive little stimulation but are expected to perform in an emergency. (Waste lift stations, emergency communications, prisons, traffic signals, UPS and many other applications.) XerGizer is different from our ExerGizer consumer product. It is powered by the batteries it monitors instead of its own charger. Even if we provide an optional charger, it is electrically separate from the monitor, making it easy to detect a failed charger. It has external alarm contacts that fail closed requiring a healthy battery to prevent the alarm contacts from closing. With a “fail-on” contact, even an XerGizer failure will close the alarm contact. Additionally, XerGizer has a “kill” circuit to prevent or stop the exercise test if the standby equipment is started. With the XerGizer, battery maintenance is reduced while reliability reaches the ultimate level. Battery life is easy to extend with the confidence of a daily test. The alarm threshold is set to insure notification of an impending battery problem, not an already dead battery. The XerGizer overcomes the high cost of frequent battery replacement and excessive starting of equipment in critical applications. Back-up generators that are run frequently to exercise batteries and to assure that the batteries worked, require more fuel and maintenance. Engine life is reduced, noise and air pollution increase. Most importantly, XerGizers significantly increase reliability by eliminating battery failures, the largest cause of generator failures. Another cost saving feature of advanced notification of battery failure is replacing the battery before the acid boils out and the charger burns out from trying to charge a dead battery. Here’s how it works: It has timers, a voltage monitor with an alarm, and resistors to simulate the duty placed on the battery from starting the motor. We do not call this a load test because to most people familiar with battery testing, load tests are minimum of 3 times more duty than simply starting a motor. Some load tests will last for hours and draw the battery down significantly and reduce the battery life. We call our test an exercise test as we are simply giving the battery the same duty as starting the motor. A timer closes an electrical switch that connects the battery to electrical resistance for under 20 seconds. The resistors are sized to match to the watt-seconds of a normal motor start. Our longest test of commercial batteries ended this fall with the routine-test failure of a pair of 8-D batteries. They were connected as a 24 VDC bank with a 24 VDC charger and a TZGR-24-200 XerGizer. The batteries were watered occasionally and used for testing other equipment from time to time. They were given to us by technicians replacing 2 year old batteries. We had them for 12 years before they failed test, making for a useful life over 14 years. We do not advocate using batteries for 14 years but we think that the installed life can easily be doubled or tripled and still be less than half of the battery’s total life. If these batteries stayed on this telecommunications generator for 14 years with the XerGizer instead of being replaced every 2 years, 1,392 lbs of batteries would not have been recycled at a replacement cost of over $1800, plus labor charges. Here is a real opportunity to increase reliability, reduce recycling, while saving money. E-mail our engineering department with your most challenging application for a custom solution.
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