Development and field testing a new battery management technique: reserve batteries in wireless telecommunication tower applications

The Battery Health Manager-BHM/spl trade/, is a newly developed microprocessor-based device that automatically monitors and manages back-up battery power supplies without disrupting operations. In this paper, the authors report the results of field tests of a 100 A BHM/spl trade/ system that was operated for the last two years in wireless telecommunication tower sites in Ottawa, Canada. Two standard BHM/spl trade/ systems, for up to 30 A or 100 A charge/discharge, are described, but the system can be scaled up to higher or lower currents by changing the size of the single cell charger and load module.