Charging station for battery-powered equipment
Electric aerial platforms are increasingly being used in the construction industry. We come across construction sites with dozens of different aerial platforms driving around at the same time. All this equipment needs to be charged on a daily basis.
Logically, this is done at the end of the day, after the work is done. Charging all aerial work platforms simultaneously causes a huge peak in demand for power which frequently leads to an overloaded power grid and aerial work platforms not being charged properly.
Empty batteries mean that the work cannot be resumed properly the next morning, causing costly delays.
Riwal’s solution
Riwal started looking for a solution to this problem. With none available in the market, we decided to create a charging station especially for electric aerial work platforms and forklifts. Robust, portable and capable of handling peak demand in a dosed manner.
The charging station has CE marking and Riwal has now produced and started working with these charging stations, which we believe is a world’s first.
How the charging station works
The charging unit is equipped with a so-called load balancer. It works as follows. The AWPs have dynamic chargers that initially demand a lot of power and as time goes on, this decreases.
The load balancer ensures that charging is more dosed by better distributing the required power across the various chargers. If the load from one or more chargers becomes too high, the load balancer temporarily switches them off.
This creates an intelligent system that keeps the energy supply intact while ensuring that all connected aerial work platforms are recharged during the night.
Additional benefits of the charging station
The charging station has even more advantages: each unit can be tracked via track & trace, it is suitable for charging other electrical equipment and the cable reels are integrated into the housing. The latter is very practical. Cables are ‘borrowed’ for other work on site all the time. Because they are fixed, they always remain available for charging.
Anticipating the nitrogen debate
With innovations like these, we demonstrate that we are a relevant player in the construction industry. The nitrogen debate is a relevant discussion in a growing number of European countries. Construction companies anticipating the nitrogen debate are moving entirely to electric machines. To do so, however, they must have systems in place to properly manage the ‘electric’ construction site. The responsibility lies with Riwal to come up with relevant tools and ensure that with smart solutions, builders can maximise their performance.
Charging station specifications
- CE certified
- NEN 3140 certified
- 32 Amp connection
- 9x 230V reels
- 9 sockets for charging 9 machines simultaneously
- Lockable
- Lighting inside the bin
Would you like to know how Riwal’s charging station can help you improve your efficiency? Fill in the contact form and we will get in touch with you shortly.