Central Battery System Testing

Enabling CBS Testing

Central battery systems (CBS) offer an alternative emergency lighting solution. These systems use standard DALI fixtures that share power from a central backup battery in the event of a mains power failure.

If enabled, the emergency reporting function in SB can test CBS batteries by comparing the test results of connected DALI drivers before and during a switchover to battery power.

You should familiarize yourself with reporting on emergency tests before reading this section, as CBS testing uses the same menus and dialogs to create and manage driver groups.

Enable CBS testing in SB:

  1. Click Tools > Settings…

  2. Select Job Settings and scroll down to Emergency Test.

  3. Set Enable CBS emergency testing to True.

  4. Set the CBS switch polarity to Normally-open or Normally-closed as specified in your CBS documentation.

  5. Set the Delay after switching CBS to the number of seconds required for the CBS system to switch and settle before polling the connected emergency drivers.

  6. Set the Channel level for CBS testing to the desired lamp brightness for the test procedure (default 100%).

sb settings cbs enabled

Creating a CBS Emergency Group

This procedure is similar to Managing Emergency Drivers. Because CBS systems use non-emergency drivers, it is important to ensure that the correct drivers are added to the group.

Create a CBS emergency group

  1. In System view, select the top of the tree and open the Emergency Testing editor.

  2. Click sb icon new folder   Add Group to create and name a new CBS group.

  3. Click sb icon emergency add driver   Add Driver to open the Add Drivers To Group window.

  4. Expand the controller tree and select one or more drivers.

  5. Click the < and > buttons to move drivers in and out of the selected emergency group.

    Moving a driver out of the group adds it back to the sb icon folder Default Emergency Group.

  6. Click the OK button to close the window.

sb emergency add drivers to group cbs
You can also add drivers to a CBS group directly from the floor plan. See Managing Emergency Drivers.
Drivers can also be moved in the Emergency Testing editor by clicking and dragging from one group to another.
sb group driver properties cbs
Configure CBS group properties

  1. Select the group, then modify the Group Driver Properties > Central Battery System Automatic Test Properties as required:

    1. Set the Rated duration test time to the required duration for the battery system.

    2. Set the CBS switch logical area and CBS switch channel to match the logical address of the load controller output that switches the CBS inverter between mains and battery power.

Multiple groups can share the same CBS switch logical area and channel, but only one group can be tested at a time.
To run multiple tests simultaneously, each groups have a unique logical address.

Testing a CBS Group:

Once configured, a CBS test group can be tested - see Testing Emergency Drivers.

Ensure that the Test only previously failed drivers checkbox is not selected before starting the test.

  • Functional Test - Tests all drivers in the group, triggers the CBS switch channel, then tests all drivers again after the delay specified in the job settings.

  • Duration Test - Tests all drivers in the group, triggers the CBS switch channel, then tests all drivers again after the delay specified in the job settings. The duration test runs for the number of minutes specified in the Group Driver Properties.

After performing both tests, click the sb icon log info   Query Results button. Results are interpreted as follows:

Lamp State (all)
1st test 2nd test Recorded test result

FAIL

FAIL

Test not run

PASS

PASS

Test succeeded

PASS

FAIL

Emergency lamp failure
Driver State
1st test 2nd test Recorded test result

FAIL (any)

N/A

Test not run

PASS (all)

PASS (all)

Test succeeded

PASS (all)

FAIL (some)

Emergency driver failure

PASS (all)

FAIL (all)

Battery duration failure