POWER GENERATION Ӏ CRANE BATTERIES
TALKING ABouT MY GENERATIoN
To help drive down the use of fossil fuel diesel lifting power is rapidly being replaced by electricity. Julian Champkin reports.
King diesel is dead; or at least he is rather sick... Long live king electricity! Actually electric power is
not yet king in the lifting world but he is a sturdy and ambitious princeling, growing stronger every day and able to take over more and more of the duties that, till now have been the realm of diesel. Electricity has been an option
for a while, particularly for light lifting: mini-cranes and spider cranes are, of course, offered with cable or battery options. The ability to operate quietly, and without foul-smelling (and planet-destroying) emissions has given them a huge selling point for tasks in enclosed and public places such as shopping malls. They can work during normal hours, needing only a small section around them to be cordoned off rather than requiring the whole building to be shut during what would otherwise be a profitable working day. Thus Jekko’s latest machine,
the SPX328 released autumn 2022, is powered by lithium-ion batteries and can work up to eight hours with a single charge. And it can operate even while it is being charged, by trailing cable from a standard 220V (110V for the USA) supply. Fast recharge takes about four-and-a-half hours. But heavy lifting is a different
24 CRANES TODAY
matter. The power required is in a different league. A normal domestic supply, or even a three- phase light-industrial system, may be unable to deliver the peak energy that say a tower crane or a crawler with a load of several tonnes will need; and on-board batteries would be prohibitively heavy and bulky, or else would offer very limited service hours before needing lengthy, possibly overnight, recharging. Such was the reasoning just a year or two back; and it seemed very valid at the time.
CHANGING TIMES But if you want an illustration of how quickly things are changing, consider this. Back in 2018 – all of five years ago – Liebherr gave Cranes Today, this statement: “There are no alternative drive concepts [to diesel] for medium
Lithium batteries
weigh 21 times as much as the same amount of energy in a tank of diesel. Graphic: courtesy of Liebherr
to heavy mobile cranes in the foreseeable future. For smaller sizes, one can imagine an electric drive, but operated by electricity on site ("construction site electricity")... There will be many changes in the logistics sector, but not for construction machinery. In the medium term, we see no alternative to diesel for our industry.”
That was in 2018. In December
2020 – just two years later – they introduced the “Liebherr Unplugged” battery-powered lattice crawler crane. It was the first battery-powered crawler crane in the world, and it was a game-changer. It came – still comes – in 200 tonne and 250 tonne versions: the LR 1200.1 and the LR 1250.1. These cranes have the same structural elements – and the same performance – as their conventional diesel-powered
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53
