John Lawton, Marketing Director of Enersys Motive Power Europe, comments on the reduction of energy used by the latest lift truck battery charging and fleet management technology
There has been a continuous development in the design of motive power battery chargers which means that users can now have far more control over the energy that they use. High frequency (HF) charging technology is at the forefront of this revolution.
By using intelligent communication between charger and battery, significant savings can be made in electricity usage. A switch to HF battery charging can bring up to a 20 per cent reduction. The latest chargers are particularly energy efficient, providing high power factors and efficiency of around 90 per cent — a significant improvement in electrical efficiency compared with conventional ferro-resonant style chargers.
These advantages in efficiency are due to the way the charger operates. Ionic mixing by pulse currents ensures perfect homogenisation of the electrolyte in the battery. A pulse is sent to the battery on charge and is received back with information on the battery’s voltage, amperage and state of charge. The charger supplies only the charge that is required, and no more. This saves considerable amounts on electricity consumed compared with 50Hz charging.
Social responsibility
In line with climate change concerns there is now an additional issue: that of corporate social responsibility and carbon footprint. It has been estimated that a reduction of electricity consumption of just 15kW per day will produce an annual CO2 saving of 453 kg if coal-generated power, and 2267kg for gas. Further reduction in the carbon footprint can be brought about by the use of automatic battery fleet management. This also ensures the best possible life-cycle management for each individual battery.
Taking automatic management one stage further, where charging is managed to accord with the user’s own electrical tariff, by switching off chargers when overall electrical demand is high, expensive spikes can be avoided.
With the power efficiency and ‘intelligence’ of the chargers and overall fleet management capability, those who now embrace the latest HF technology are likely to see significant cost benefits. They will also have the satisfaction of knowing that their carbon footprint is minimised.
