Data logging for battery storage sites
A grid-scale battery produces thousands of signals a second, and the questions come later: was the response delivered, why did the rack trip, is the degradation inside warranty. Vault keeps the answers on site.
What a battery site should keep
Log at the PLC or site controller, where the signals are already gathered, and keep the raw values. Averages can always be calculated later; detail thrown away cannot be recovered.
- Point of connection
- Active and reactive power, frequency, voltages, energy registers: your own record of every dispatch.
- PCS
- Setpoint against actual power, state, faults, DC voltage and current, IGBT and heatsink temperatures.
- BMS and racks
- State of charge and health, cell voltage and temperature extremes with cell numbers, contactor states, insulation resistance, balancing.
- Balance of plant
- Switchgear positions and trips, transformer temperatures and gases, HVAC modes, fire and gas detection.
- Site controller
- Dispatch mode, limits, availability and the instructions received, so the site's behaviour can be matched to what it was told to do.
Why the gaps matter more here
On a battery site the record is commercial evidence. A trend that quietly joins across a two-minute outage can show a response that was never measured.
Service delivery
When delivery of a frequency or reserve service is questioned, your own one-second record, with honest gaps and declared compression, shows what the site did. It sits beside the 20 Hz performance data NESO's dynamic services require; it does not replace it.
Warranty and degradation
Cell temperatures, cycle counts and state of health over years, in open files that the operator owns, not only in the supplier's portal.
Trips and investigations
Play back the minutes before a trip across PCS, BMS and switchgear on one time axis, then export the window with its notes.
What 2,500 signals at one second (1,058 changes a second) took in the week-long soak with no deadband. A 512 GB drive used to 75 % holds about 22 months; deadband on slow signals stretches that.
See Vault on your own plant
Early access sites get the full product, direct help from engineering, and their first site licence for £1,995 instead of £2,495.