The Food and Commodity warehouses around our country are getting bigger as our population grows, this has in turn required larger forklift fleets and more batteries to power these forklifts as many of them are now working 24/7.

To maximise the return on investment in forklift batteries it is very important to focus on whole of life cost over simple acquisition cost.

In calculating Whole Of Life Cost you must typically consider the following:

Equipment – racking systems, battery charging equipment, wall brackets for chargers, wash stations, environmental equipment. This equates to approximately 1% of the WOLC.

Energy – This is the cost of the electricity required to recharge the battery over its life. This equates to about 13% of the WOLC.

Battery – The initial purchase price of the battery. This equates to around 13% of the WOLC.

Building – This calculates the opportunity cost of the warehouse space taken up by the battery charging bay. This is estimated to be 13% of WOLC.

Labour – This is the labour cost to look after the battery, top up the electrolyte after charge, putting the battery on charge, keeping the battery clean and free from corrosion. This equates to approximately 60% of the WOLC.

As you can see from the figures above the biggest potential area to reduce cost in your electric forklift batteries is to reduce the labour content to service the batteries.

This can be achieved in many ways.

Fitting Automatic Watering Systems, there are several brands on the market the most popular being BFS and available through all EXIDE branches.

Electronic Battery Level Indicators show the operator when the pilot cell has run out of electrolyte and helps to reduce over filling. These are commonly referred to as "Blinky Bills" and are mounted up close to the battery plug, so they cannot be missed. Blinky’s have a bright green light when the cell is topped up, flash green when the cell is low on electrolyte and red when the electrolyte has reached the top of the plate and the cell required topping up.

High Frequency Battery Chargers use less electricity to recharge the battery than standard taper chargers, hence keeping the battery cooler through the charge cycle and reducing cool down time.    These battery chargers also offer numerous other benefits in battery management reporting and networking capabilities and time delay programming to take advantage of cheaper electrical tariff rates.

Fully Sealed Batteries have higher initial cost but have huge operational cost savings.  They do not require watering. They do not require topping up after each charge. They do not gas under charge; hence you do not require a dedicated battery charging room. This allows you to spread the charge stations around the warehouse.

Low Maintenance Batteries branded "LIBERATOR" marketed by EXIDE, have  wet tubular traction cells with a low antomy grid; these batteries only require topping up every 40 – 70 cycles (2 – 3 months) depending on work load. They also have 72% less gassing emissions under charge than standard flooded batteries.