Semi-Trucks: Why You Should Monitor with Battery Backup

Yesterday at about 4PM a truck clipped the power line connected to Dickson’s building. In the photo above, you’ll notice the power line to the right leaning ominously to the left (you’ll also notice the offending truck). We lost power for the rest of the day (as did a few of the surrounding businesses) and I got to thinking about how important it is that our logging devices have a battery backup.

Whether it is a thunderstorm, hurricane, or a semi-truck clipping the power line to your building, power interruptions happen, and usually unexpectedly. Other than our calibration chambers being mid calibration, we’re fortunate to not have any large temperature sensitive product (though my lunch leftovers are now questionable) stored in our facility.

A large number of our customers do store, manufacture, or transport temperature sensitive products (food, vaccines, pharmaceutical drugs) and it is vital for them to have reliable temperature information during power outages or else they risk having to dispose of thousands and in some cases millions of dollars worth of products.

Our full line of data loggers and chart recorders offer battery backups in the event of a power outage. Some of our instruments including the TM320 data logger and the TH800 chart recorder are battery operated.

Matt McNamara
DicksonOne Product Manager