New Industrial Battery Charger from ABB Improves Reliability – Lift and Access

ABB says its new Integritas* industrial battery charger offers single-charger redundancy in a modular, compact, wall-mounted footprint and achieves up to 95.7% efficiency at 50-100% output current.

The wall-mounted system features switch-mode rectifier technology that provides transformer-less, efficient power conversion in a compact footprint, providing true N+1 or N+N redundancy in a single battery charger.

"Ensuring reliable, efficient AC-to-DC power and battery backup is essential in applications such as utility power, oil and gas, and process control to name a few where downtime can be critical," said Mark Lloyd, senior product manager with ABB. "Having reliable, efficient backup power in a single charger with high power density helps ensure these critical applications remain up-and-running while also reducing the footprint of the power equipment needed freeing up valuable floor space."

ABB's versatile industrial battery charger puts out up to 18 kW at 125V DC from a direct, three-phase, 480-volt AC input feed.

New Nebula Controller Improves Charger Management

The industrial battery charger is the first ABB solution to use the company's new Nebula controller, which takes system monitoring, maintenance, and security to a new level.

The Nebula controller makes accessing and reviewing critical information simple, both locally and remotely. The 7 color touchscreen on the front of the charger can display information about active performance, alarms, status updates on input and output, and more.

In addition, the Nebula controller uses Distributed Network Protocol 3 communications. That allows the battery status to be networked with plant-wide distributed control systems or supervisory control and data acquisition systems.

Key Features

Enhanced Capability and Redundancy

The Integritas industrial battery charger features another new product specifically designed for industrial applications the IP040H3R125ATEZ switch-mode rectifier. The new industrial rectifier can convert 480 VAC directly to 125 VDC without a step-down transformer.

In addition, when installed in a 19 cabinet frame, the IP040 industrial rectifiers can provide 150A output current in a 14x 17x 28 space.

Switch-mode rectifier technology helps the industrial battery charger unleash even more performance and design benefits. The rectifiers operate at a higher switching frequency (90-270 kHz) than conventional silicon-controlled rectifiers, which typically operate in the 45-65 Hz range. This technology also helps to reduce the size and weight of the power conversion components, compared to comparable silicon-controlled rectifier-based battery chargers.

AC-DC conversion is also more efficient with switch-mode rectifiers, creating a lower thermal impact, higher power efficiency of up to 95.7%, and improving the life cycle of the unit.

"Employing a modular, expandable rectifier design into a single charger allows for power to be scaled as needed," Lloyd continued. "Using multiple power modules, the charger can be configured for N+1 redundancy to maintain full power output if one power unit fails. The battery charger also can be configured for full N+N redundancy by using multiple mirrored power supplies enabling even greater reliability."

The modular design of the Integritas industrial battery charger allows for critical components to be "hot swapped" for easier repair or replacement, keeping the charging load up during maintenance or replacements and reducing overall maintenance costs.

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New Industrial Battery Charger from ABB Improves Reliability - Lift and Access