Patent Application
20190011972
The invention relates to a power management system and, in particular, to a power management system that displays background colors to indicate battery statuses.
Currently, a control room is configured with servers, communication devices or power systems for the purpose of processing a huge amount of information or providing electrical power. However, with the rapid development in network speed and tremendous information to be processed, the control room also becomes bigger and bigger in order to increase the information processing speed and provide sufficient electrical power. Therefore, managing the control room in an effective way has become a trend.
Take a power system as an example. As electrical/electronic equipment requires higher power, more electrical power will be consumed. In order to provide sufficient electrical power to electrical/electronic equipment, the power system needs to have more batteries and thus more complicated wiring. In order to increase the efficiency of maintaining and managing the control room, one method is to distinguish wires by different colors and to group wires of the same color. Another method is to associate battery sockets or connection ports with different colors and to connect the sockets or connection ports of the same color together. Those methods put batteries of the same power supply targets or of the same power consumption into the same group. Battery management is thus more convenient through grouping by colors.
Management of grouped battery has the advantage of managing batteries more easily. However, when some battery is out of order, the maintenance person at the control room only knows how many groups of batteries are out there. The person still needs to check the groups one by one to find the group with the faulty battery. As the maintenance person cannot rapidly and effectively identify the faulty battery group, it takes more manpower and time in maintenance. It may sometimes get into a dangerous situation if the faulty battery fails to be repaired in time.
In view of the foregoing drawbacks of conventional techniques, the invention provides a power management system that displays background colors to indicate the statuses of a battery. With different background colors in display, the maintenance person can more directly and rapidly find the group with a faulty battery, thereby increasing the maintenance speed and management convenience.
To achieve the above-mentioned objective, the power management system includes at least one battery set, at least one sensor, and at least one management device.
Each of the at least one battery sets includes a plurality of batteries for providing and storing electrical power.
Each of the at least one sensor is connected to a corresponding battery set to detect a current status of the corresponding battery set and generate detection information.
Each of the at least one power management device includes a processor, a first connection port, and a display. The first connection port is connected to the at least one sensor to receive the detection information and send the detection information to the processor, and the processor generates status information according to the received detection information and enables the display to show a background color corresponding to the status information.
From the above-mentioned structure, given the display using the background color to indicate the current status of the associated battery set, the maintenance person can quickly identify the faulty battery set by checking the background colors of the displays. Thus, the goals of enhancing maintenance efficiency and facilitating easy management of the power management system can be achieved.
The present invention will be apparent from the following detailed description, which proceeds with reference to the accompanying drawings, wherein the same references relate to the same elements.
Please refer to
The power management device 30 includes a processor 31, a display 32, and a first connection port 33. The processor 31 is connected to the display 32 and the first connection port 33, and the first connection port 33 is connected to the sensor 20. In this embodiment, the display 32 is a liquid crystal display (LCD) that can simultaneously display both background color and text messages, just background color, or just text messages.
The sensor 20 detects a current status of the battery set 10, such as the capacity, temperature, and voltage of the battery set. The sensor 20 sends detection information via the first connection port 33 to the processor 31 according to the detected battery status. The processor 31 generates corresponding status information according to the detection information, and sends the status information to the display 32, thereby driving the display 32 to show a corresponding background color indicative of the current status of the battery set 10.
For example, suppose that a battery set 10 severely deteriorates in terms of efficiency or is out of order. The display 32 uses a background color with a warning effect, such as red or orange, to show the status of the battery set 10. The aforementioned colors are only examples and should not be treated as limitations to the present invention. A maintenance person can quickly and directly know the statuses of the battery sets 10 by checking the background colors of the corresponding displays 32, thereby quickly identifying the faulty battery set 10. Besides, the maintenance person can manipulate the power management device 30 on site so that the displays 32 show the received status information in text messages, enabling the maintenance person to identify the status of the faulty battery set 10 and to quickly know which battery set 10 is broken for assurance of fast troubleshooting.
When the status of one of the battery sets 10 is good, the corresponding display 20 uses a background color indicative of a normal or safe situation, such as green or blue, to show the status of the battery set 10. The aforementioned colors are only examples and should not be treated as limitations to the present invention. Since using colors to show the status of each of the battery sets 10 is simple and intuitive, the maintenance person can quickly distinguish normal battery groups from the broken one. During maintenance, the maintenance person can conveniently learn the statuses of the battery sets 10 by looking at the background colors of the displays 20.
In this embodiment, the sensor 20 further includes a light-emitting unit 21 with the color of emitted light being the same as the background color of the display 32. More specifically, when the display 32 shows red background color, the processor 31 sends a corresponding driving signal to the sensor 20 via the first connection port 33, making the light-emitting unit 21 emit the corresponding red light. Having the same color for the light emitted from the light-emitting unit 21 and the background color of the display 32 enables the maintenance person to more accurately and quickly identify the faulty battery set.
Please refer to
The power management device 30 transmits the status information to the remote control device 40, for the maintenance person to know the status of the battery set 10. This makes it much easier for the maintenance person to repair the faulty battery set 10 on site.
In this embodiment, through the function of locating or finding device, the remote control device 40 sends setting information to the power management device 30 to change the background color of the display 32. The maintenance person can thus conveniently locate the power management device 30 according to the background color of the display 32.
In this embodiment, the remote control device 40 further sends setting information to the power management device 30 to change the background color of the display 32. After receiving the setting information, the power management device 30 further sends a driving signal corresponding to the setting information to the sensor 20 to control the light-emitting color of the light-emitting unit 21 to be the same as the background color of the display 32. In other words, the remote control device 40 can remotely control the background color of the light-emitting unit 21 of one of the sensors 20 associated with the corresponding battery set 10.
A third embodiment of a power management system that displays background colors to indicate battery statuses is shown in
Please refer to
In the daisy chain topology, the foremost power group 100A is taken as a primary power group 100A while the rest of the power groups 100A are auxiliary power groups 100A. The background color of the display 32 associated with each of the auxiliary power groups 100A and the background color of the display 32 associated with the primary power group 100A have different shades of colors. For example, the display 32 of the primary power group 100A uses a darker background color, and the displays 32 of the auxiliary power groups 100A use a lighter background color. Alternatively, the display 32 of the primary power group 100A uses a lighter background color, and the displays 32 of the auxiliary power groups 100A use a darker background color. The maintenance person can readily know the group relation of the power groups 100A according to the background colors of the displays 32 of the primary power group 100A and the auxiliary power groups 100. As an explicit example, the display 32 of the primary power group 100A uses a dark red background color, and the displays 32 of the auxiliary power groups 100A use a light red background color. Those examples are provided for the purpose of illustration and should not be used to limit the scope of the invention. The colors can be set according to practical needs. By connecting power supplies with correlation or for the same power supply targets in the control room in a daisy chain topology, the maintenance person can easily manage the power supplies through the topology.
The remote control device 40 is connected to all of the power management devices 30 for the maintenance person to conveniently manage the power groups 100B via the remote control device 40. There are two ways for the maintenance person to manage the power groups 100B via the remote control device 40. In the first scenario, when one of the battery sets 10 associated with a corresponding power management device 30 is out of order, the display 32 of the corresponding power management device 30 is controlled to show a corresponding background color while status information about the faulty battery set 10 is sent to the remote control device 40 at the same time. The remote control device 40 displays the received status information for the maintenance person to know about the faulty battery set 10. In this scenario, the power management device 30 proactively notifies the remote control device 40 of the broken battery set.
In the second scenario, when one of the battery sets 10 associated with a corresponding power management device 30 is out of order, the corresponding status information is sent by the corresponding power management device 30 to the remote control device 40. The remote control device 40 then shows the received status information for the maintenance person to know that the battery set 10 is broken. Moreover, the remote control device 40 returns the setting information to the corresponding power management device 30 that sends the status information to control the connected display 32 to show a corresponding background color. The maintenance person thus knows which battery set 10 of a corresponding power group 100B is out of order. The second scenario makes use of active locating. The remote control device 40 changes the background color of the display 32 of a corresponding power management device 30 according to the received status information, enabling the maintenance person to quickly locate a faulty battery set 10 in the corresponding power group 100B.
With reference to
By virtue of sensed signals associated with current status of the battery sets 10 received by the power management device 30, the power management device 30 generates status information according to the sensed signals and controls the display 32 thereof to display a corresponding background color according to the status information. Therefore, the maintenance person on site can directly see the background color on the display 32 to conveniently and quickly identify a corresponding power group 100 and a faulty battery set 10 in the corresponding power group 100 for speeding up maintenance and facilitating easy management.
The invention being thus described, it will be obvious that the same may be varied in many ways. Such variations are not to be regarded as a departure from the spirit and scope of the invention, and all such modifications as would be obvious to one skilled in the art are intended to be included within the scope of the following claims.
While the invention has been described by way of example and in terms of the preferred embodiment, it is to be understood that the invention is not limited to the disclosed embodiments. To the contrary, it is intended to cover various modifications and similar arrangements as would be apparent to those skilled in the art. Therefore, the scope of the appended claims should be accorded the broadest interpretation so as to encompass all such modifications and similar arrangements.
