Power your forklifts with the sun

“If you wanted to power the entire United States with solar panels, it would take a fairly small corner of Nevada or Texas or Utah; you only need about 100 miles by 100 miles of solar panels to power the entire United States.”– Elon Musk

Solar energy is powerful. It wouldn’t take a lot of it to generate the electricity we need to power civilisation. It is now completely ordinary to see panels on your neighbours’ roof soaking up solar energy, just as we are getting used to looking out to sea and seeing a wind farm on the horizon.

Last year, Elon Musk laid out his vision for renewable energy that relies on storing power from the sun via solar panels. While we will leave the plans to power the planet with Mr. Musk, we do believe that we can help power your materials handling equipment.

During the past two years, we have helped three established companies make better use of the electricity that their solar panels produce.

Firstly, we converted their forklifts from engine powered machines to battery electric. Secondly, we provided them with the equipment to help capture solar power whilst it’s being generated for use when it is needed.

Typically, solar panels are generating electricity in the daytime when the equipment is in use, so how can you make use of this power? By providing a spare battery, which is charged during the day and then fitted to the forklift before it is used the next day. While that battery is in use, you then charge the flat battery.

One of our customers, a major builders merchant on the south coast, has moved away from engine powered materials handling equipment. They have found that a charged battery lasts them three days. In this case, they only need one battery for every three machines.

What are the benefits?

In terms of cost-savings, it’s a no-brainer…

A typical LPG truck burns around 3kg of gas per hour costing around £6 per hour.
A typical battery powered truck uses around 8KW per hour costing £1 per hour.
That’s an instant saving of £5 per hour or £6,000 on a machine working 1000 hours per year.
If you then charge your battery with free solar or wind energy you can save a further £1000 per year with an initial investment of only around £3000.

The environmental benefits are also something to take into consideration…