Skip to the main content.

About SENS

SENS non-stop DC power systems, mission-critical filtered chargers, and engine start chargers keep vital industries in business by helping insure against the risk of loss of life and property in case of a commercial power outage.

SENS is synonymous with reliability. Our battery charging algorithms bring out the battery’s full life and performance potential. SENS' meticulous design and quality control delivers charger reliability as close to “bulletproof” as is technically possible. For SENS users these dual reliability advantages mean lowest risk of costly downtime.

Many customers praise our high-energy, responsive service. Everyone on the SENS team understands the critical nature of customer operations, and shares the vision that fast, accurate service is important to you. Our lean production system, for example, delivers a combination of high quality, fast delivery and competitive pricing that is unique to SENS.

SENS is a partner in the success of many energy, utility, communication, and process manufacturing companies. We look forward to becoming a partner in your success.

Unique Value-add

 

SENS protects critical infrastructure from shutdown due to power loss

The keystone technology of modern life is electric power. Without it there is no fresh water, food, heat, communications, financial system, health care or government.

SENS products are vital in protecting the power grid from serious damage due to natural disaster. They also deliver short-term standby power when grid power fails. Today our ultra-reliable products are trusted components of the energy infrastructure on every continent of the globe – even Antarctica.

Since 1971 SENS has been designing and manufacturing industrial-strength DC power systems and utility-grade battery chargers that deliver non-stop, round-the-clock power to critical industrial controls in the midst of unpredictable and potentially catastrophic AC power disruptions.

Some of the best-known oil and gas providers, utilities, data centers, hospitals and government operations, such as air traffic control, depend on tens of thousands of SENS products to keep electric power, information, transportation and industrial processes from failing due to lack of power.

You can depend on SENS too.

What makes SENS different?

We focus relentlessly on our mission of protecting critical infrastructure from shutdown due to power loss.

Our people are passionate about meeting our customer commitment to provide rock-solid, class-leading battery system dependability, delivered on time, every time.

We continue to deliver product innovations that for most customers provide the lowest total cost solution.

Lowest Total Cost

 

Mission-critical systems are typically backed up with power electronics and energy storage to ensure that applications remain powered during utility blackouts. As with most insurance products, low cost is one of the most important factors in the customer’s backup power purchase decision.

The lowest-cost backup power system, however, is almost never the cheapest to buy. That’s because capital cost is only a fraction of the total cost of power protection.

The reason the cheapest power protection equipment is almost never the lowest total cost solution is that the single largest cost related to backup power is failure. Poor quality backup power equipment fails at a higher rate than well-designed, high quality backup power equipment. When it fails, power protection equipment is worse than useless. It generates a huge negative return on investment. In addition to costly application failure, users must endure additional capital investment to replace the original failed power protection equipment.

SENS’ core contribution is delivering extremely high quality power protection systems at the lowest total cost. We do this by delivering power electronics of the highest reliability, providing advance warning of predictable storage battery deterioration, and minimizing customer costs to specify, purchase, receive, install, operate, manage and maintain their non-stop power system.

Examples of how SENS reduces customer costs:

  • Product reliability: SENS’ flagship NRG and IQ battery chargers deliver observed field failure rates in excess of 3 million and 1 million hours, respectively.
  • Delivery reliability: For years, SENS has delivered in excess of 98% of products on time. The less than 2% late are tardy by typically a couple of days.
  • Customer cost avoidance: By integrating all system elements in a single cabinet, SENS PowerCab™ slashes customer costs making SENS the single point of contact which reduces transaction cost. Customers receive one single unit, cutting receiving cost. The simple package and easy wiring slash installation costs. Eliminating handling of heavy batteries minimizes risk of costly workplace injuries.
  • Reduced OpEx: SENS IQ chargers operate at higher efficiency than some popular competing units. For a charger delivering continuous 1.2 KW, the annual savings of 7.5% better efficiency is 1,139 KWH/year. Cost savings over a 20-year life for electricity costing $0.10 per KWH would be $2,278, or a large portion of the charger’s purchase price.
  • Peace of mind: SENS invests heavily in third-party audits and agency compliance services, so you don’t have to. Learn more here.

SENS History

 

Battery industry veteran and M.I.T. graduate Herb Kaewert founded Stored Energy Systems® (SENS) in 1971. He located the company in the heart of Silicon Valley, amidst a vibrant high technology culture. Kaewert had previously founded Alkaline Batteries Corporation (ALCAD). He grew ALCAD* to be one of the leading suppliers of NiCd batteries in the U.S., ultimately selling the company to the Chloride Group (U.K.)

Through his years of experience with industrial batteries, Kaewert recognized the inherent sensitivity of batteries to a variety of factors such as temperature, shelf life, overcharging, and undercharging. He also saw that there were no commercially available battery chargers that took these factors into account. His conviction that he could increase the reliability and useful life of batteries through better charger technology led him to found SENS. He proved to be correct.

SENS built chargers that automatically adapted charging characteristics to suit the exact needs of the batteries. Numerous customers experienced radical increases in battery life (as much as 10x in harsh environments) and found that their total costs and risk of battery failure went down significantly. The company grew based on this principle and built an impressive list of customers including Bechtel, Pennsylvania Power & Light, Exxon Mobil, El Paso Energy and AT&T. Since that time SENS has held true to the early principles in which Kaewert believed. For example, nearly all of the 100’s of thousands of chargers SENS has shipped have included automatic temperature compensation as a standard feature.

In 1991, to accommodate needs for expansion, Herb and his son Bill moved the company to its current location in Longmont, Colorado. There, Bill took over day-to-day operations of the company. While the Longmont site had significant room for expansion, Bill believed that SENS growth and quality objectives could best be met by adopting a philosophy and process improvement approach called “Lean”, pioneered by Toyota Motor Company. The Lean philosophy of continuous improvement places responsibility for improvement on the people who know the processes best. Lean has paid off in significant benefits for the company and its customers. SENS lead times are the fastest in the industry, even though every product is built to customer order. Quality and reliability are extremely high, with some models demonstrating 1 million hours mean time between failures (MTBF). At the same time, Lean has enabled SENS to keep prices low through the development of close relationships with suppliers and by carrying very low levels of inventory. SENS is now adopting Lean principles throughout the company to further improve quality and responsiveness to customer needs in all aspects of the business.

Since 1991, the company has expanded more than tenfold. To help lead this growth, Herb’s son Doug, formerly a senior executive at Sun Microsystems, joined the company in 2006. Under the leadership of the Kaewert brothers, SENS has continued to innovate in product development along the principles Herb established early on. Most recently, the company has developed the EnerGenius® IQ, SENS’ microprocessor-controlled DC power supply / charger with integrated battery monitoring and an embedded “battery expert” system and the MicroGenius® 150, a rugged engine start charger that automatically adapts to provide the best possible charging each individual charging cycle.

SENS is now the leading supplier of high reliability DC power supplies / chargers to the standby and emergency generator (Gen Set) market. It is a major and rapidly growing supplier to the utility, oil & gas, and process control markets. Key customers include General Electric, Caterpillar, numerous electric utilities, and manufacturers in the chemical and pharmaceutical industries.

*Alcad is a trademark of Saft Groupe S.A. here.