MHM Sales Director, Brad Ireland, with the recently launched solar-battery-diesel hybrid generator - it also runs on HVO. Smarter Energy Storage As on-site power generation looks to become cleaner and greener,
energy storage will play a growing role. Dan Jenkins reports on some of the latest developments…
D
eploying batteries as power sources on site is becoming more common as
construction contractors look to reduce rising energy costs and cut carbon emissions.
Looking to lithium batteries for answers has also led some organisations to question: what if we re-used batteries from vehicles and plant instead of installing new ones? This is certainly an area of interest for construction equipment OEMs Caterpillar and Volvo. Caterpillar Venture Capital and Volvo Energy are part of a consortium that just invested £15 million in Connected Energy, a leader in repurposing what it calls ‘second life’ lithium batteries for large scale energy storage.
According to Connected Energy CEO Matthew Lumsden, when batteries are around 25% degraded they become unsuited to life in an electric vehicle (EV) but
still have sufficient capacity for up to 20 years’ more use in a battery energy storage system (BESS). For OEMs producing increasing numbers of battery-powered machines, this opens up an avenue to reuse those batteries once they are no longer suitable for use in plant equipment.
“By creating second-use applications for batteries, at the end of their life in a vehicle, helps to create a circular business model for batteries, minimising the environmental impact and ensuring that the maximum value is obtained from them,” says Lumsden.
The company has already deployed 16 systems for various applications and believes that batteries from today’s plant equipment could end up being reused on the construction sites of tomorrow. “As more and more equipment is being electrified, the application of battery storage working
together with an on-site generator can effectively be used as a peak load management,” adds Lumsden.
“One application we have seen this used successfully is where high start-up currents are required such as tower cranes which cause a huge initial surge in power at the start of a shift. By utilising energy storage sites can specify smaller generators in the knowledge that the additional spike can be handled by the system.”
New applications Bruno Generators Group (BGG UK) is already selling its Enerpack battery packs into crane applications. “An ideal application for Enerpack would be a tower crane,” says BGG UK managing director, Chris Archer. “It has to have a flashing beacon on top that is active at night, for safety reasons. You wouldn’t want to run a generator all night just
28 Executive Hire News - September 2022
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