Forklifts and electric vehicles

Electric Forklifts Forklifts are today an important logistic tool equiped with computer, radio communication to the warehouse or company logistic computers. The power system on modern forklifts has today improved in respect how to handle current changes and the electric environment. However its still a tough environment for a DC/DC converter and they have to be designed for this application otherwise they will pop very quickly. Electrically there are two main problem with forklift supply. Depending on the drive system it can generate continuos commutation spikes, which also increases by the speed of the forklift. The second problem is large voltage variation because of high loads on the battery that makes the voltage to crank. Finally the vehicle environment can be tough, especially in froozen food storages or deep mines exploration with high temperature, humidity and dust. Forklifts are using 24, 48, 72V lead acid batteries, which also work as counter weight. Another aspect is that forklifts works several shifts and change the forklift battery several times a day. To protect the computer in such application Polyamp has developed a fast charging DC-UPS. Electric vehicles Other electric vehicles have the same type of input as forklifts. A lot of efforts is made in developing hybride drives. The problem is that the batteries used can not be produced as a large single batteries. It makes the batteries to have limited current capacity (LiIon/NiMH). This forces the battery assemblies to supply high voltage. In one respect its good as the motor drives use high voltage (made for three phase), the other side is that the battery pack and changing becomes very complicated compared to a forklift battery.

Senast uppdaterad 2010-01-04 08:51