ALABC member NorthStar has won a prestigious innovation award for its Advanced Connected Energy (ACE) product, which enables customers to assess the state of health of VRLA batteries before they are installed and to monitor them post installation.

NorthStar received The Sally Miksiewicz Innovation Award at the Battery Council International annual convention in Jacksonville this week.

The technology, NorthStar ACE, utilises Bluetooth technology and a smartphone app.

Commenting, NorthStar’s CEO Hans Liden said: “Sally believed innovation was a vital part of moving both technology and customer satisfaction forward. The award for ACE innovation is the result of a focused team effort, where our battery design experts have cooperated with our creative application engineers to come up with a solution that allows our battery technology to add so much more value than just energy to the customer.”

This is the second company to be honoured by the award which was established following the tragic death of Sally, the former CEO and Vice chairman of East Penn manufacturing in 2014.

Last week NorthStar announced that it will partner City Utilities of Springfield, Missouri, US, in a pilot project to install its Blue+ thin plate lead batteries as a back-up power system during peak usage for the utility’s 111,000 customers.