Patent ID: 8279074

Claim:
A power system for a cell site of a wireless communications system, the power system comprising: a battery circuit, including: multiple batteries; multiple jumpers configured to connect two of the batteries in a series configuration, to connect one of the batteries to ground, and to connect another one of the batteries to a battery circuit output; multiple sense circuits each configured to monitor at least one of the batteries, wherein each sense circuit includes: an opto-isolator circuit coupled across at least one battery and a portion of one jumper, and configured to provide an opto-isolator output to indicate a voltage across the at least one battery and portion of one jumper; and, a high-pass filter configured to pass an alternating current (AC) component of the opto-isolator output to a power controller as a sense circuit output; and, a power controller configured to detect arcing, predict arcing, or both, within the battery circuit, within a ground connection, and within a battery circuit output connection according to integrating a difference in non common-mode components of the AC components of the outputs of each high-pass filter over a time period, and to report detected arcing, predicted arcing, or both, to a remote monitoring facility.