POWER MANAGEMENT
The Power of Remote Monitoring South Africa is an increasingly energy-uncertain country. With the national utility facing daunting financial and technical challenges, consumers can no longer bank on uninterrupted power supply.
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or businesses and facilities that cannot afford downtime, such as IT data centres, factories, construction companies, mines, banks and telecoms providers, the situation calls for alternative solutions. Master Power Technologies (MPT) specialises in turnkey solutions that include uninterruptible power supplies (UPSs), generator sets, fuel systems, battery and energy management processes, however they admit that not even the best backup power solutions are infallible.
A solution
In response to this, MPT has developed its automated remote monitoring feature. “The heart of our remote monitoring offering is the master power universal controller (UC). The UC is a range of application-specific hardware and software that controls and monitors all components of our backup power solutions,” says Rory Reid, sales and marketing director for MPT.
When the UC detects an issue, which can be anything from a mains failure to a battery failure in a UPS installation, it raises an alarm The UC provides real-time hardware and software monitoring, and internal intelligent automatic action to mitigate potentially critical issues that could cripple essential functions. “Our team monitors customer systems from our 24/7/365 network operating centre, and deploys site assistance before a situation reaches critical points. Be it breakdown support or routine maintenance.”
its remote monitoring capabilities. These include triple change-over controls, which select and then operate any of the three sources connected to them in order to provide power to the site. In addition, the base transceiver station (BTS) remote monitoring is a desktop and mobile phone app that remotely monitors sites and generates equipment reports. Finally the remote management system monitors all alarms and the condition or status of secure power equipment in critical areas such as data centres. This includes environmental monitoring, humidity, temperature, intrusion detection and CCTV monitoring.
Watch the batteries
“Every UPS is only as reliable as the batteries providing the back-up power, hence companies must ensure that their batteries are functioning optimally at all times,” continues Rory. BattSure is a battery manager that provides customers with surety of site performance according to design specifications. The technology protects a site by monitoring the safe and correct operation of its batteries, which is vital for a site’s uninterrupted power supply. When the UC detects an issue, which can be anything from a mains failure to a battery failure in a UPS installation, it raises an alarm. In response, the operators at the remote monitoring centre follow standard operating procedures to deal with the issue. “As the UC monitors the situation in real time, a log is kept of the performance of all electronic equipment under observation, providing customers with a clear understanding of the status and performance of their systems,” concludes Rory. Master Power Technologies Rory Reid Tel: (011) 792-7230 Email: sales@kva.co.za www.kva.co.za
With the UC as the backbone, MPT developed several product applications to improve and expand
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THE SOUTH AFRICAN MECHANICAL ENGINEER
VOL 69 September 2019