Main UK

Distributor for Alcad

Nickel-Cadmium Batteries

Provider of Battery Support Services

Battery systems are used in substations to close and trip high voltage circuit breakers, for transformer protection and safe isolation during normal or fault conditions.

IBLUK supply premium quality industrial nickel-cadmium batteries from the leading manufacturer Alcad. From our extensive range of Alcad batteries we would recommend for this application the Vantex M and L Ranges for medium to long rate discharges and the XHP range for short rate high current discharges.

Please Contact Us for further information and support. We can recommend a suitable battery for your specific application.

The application requires a high reliability system as energy transmission and distribution is required at all times and cannot move into a situation of unavailability. The application often has a mixed load duty cycle with low level continuous loads and short peak loads for switching operations. Clearly, the battery type must be optimized for the loads and often high performance products are used for solenoid-actuated switch gear and medium to long rate products for spring-actuated switch gear.

Since the battery protects expensive transformers, reliability is foremost  in its required attributes. In addition a long life is required as the typical substation life is over 25 years and low maintenance helps to minimise the life cycle cost. Since smaller distribution substations have more extreme temperatures, the ability to function over a wide temperature range is essential.

   The advantage of the Ni-Cd battery for this application is that they have a long life and high reliability, with the 20+ year lifetime able to match the system it is supporting. With its steel plate structure it cannot fail in open circuit and is therefore fail-safe and highly reliable. The performance can optimized for the duty cycle and with Ni-Cd there is no tradeoff between long life and performance. With simple and infrequent maintenance and excellent operation under temperature extremes, the attributes provide a low life cycle cost solution.

More information  will be found in our Application Note - Switching and Switchgear. (pdf) download)