Crestchic releases new control and hardware system for load banks

Crestchic has released a new control technology and hardware system which gives users the ability to monitor real-time data and manage load tests quickly and simply.

Friday, 31st July 2020 Posted 4 years ago in by Phil Alsop

Using the latest in technological and hardware advances, Crestchic’s proprietary Orion control system is available for use with Crestchic AC load banks, offering individual or multiple load bank operation from a single controller. Designed to ease the life of the user, Orion provides transient response data for voltage and frequency recorded at each load-change.

Orion is built around Cretschic’s new hardware platform, Nova, which uses bespoke industrial high-performance electronic control modules specifically designed for load bank operation. Communications between each Orion load bank and their controller employs network technology to provide fast, high bandwidth data transfer capabilities.

One of the many advantages of using Nova is that the system uses optical fibre cabling which provides connectivity throughout the system. Nova works in conjunction with the control software Orion, offering advanced supervisory operation and monitoring access along with real-time data.

A major benefit of using Nova over fibre, is the total immunity to electrical noise due to the light-based nature optical fibre cabling. This makes Crestchic load banks the natural choice for sites with unforgiving environments, where communications over conventional copper cabling would be detrimentally affected.

They can also run alongside load cables without any consequences due to the pickup of switching spikes or inductive interference. Even load cables carrying voltages at MV levels will not cause interference. Additionally, fibre allows for very long control distances of up to 500m as standard, without the requirement for signal boosting.

Paul Brickman, Sales and Marketing Director at Crestchic says, “Using these new systems alongside our load banks allows our customers to increase performance and seamlessly integrate all of their data into one management system. Having access to this data gives our customers vital insight into the way their systems are running, which in turn can help them manage their assets and reduce downtime.”

The Orion control system features a large operating interface display which can be provided by a Crestchic LC80 tablet or a standard PC computer, allowing data and frequency response curves to be displayed clearly. Orion’s PC software is fully Windows compatible and can be run with 32-bit or 64-bit version on Windows 7,8 or 10.

Advanced features of the control system can be easily accessed such as graphical display of transient performance at load change, recording of instrumentation data and storage of multiuser-defined loading-profiles. The Orion AC load bank control system is designed for use in resistive/reactive or resistive only operations, with up to 15 loadbanks controlled by one controller.