Forklift batteries power the fleets at the center of facility operations. If your batteries are well-maintained, your team is empowered to drive efficient, sustainable, and productive operations. Given your forklift battery can also be as much as 30% of your forklift’s total cost, taking care of it is crucial not just for its longevity and efficiency, but in creating a safe, productive, and cost-effective facility. Improper battery care can create a financial strain on your company along with plenty of safety hazards.
Pulling from decades of experience helping some of the largest and busiest facilities across the country with their power management challenges, I’m sharing the most common mistakes that can shorten your forklift battery’s life by up to 60% or one to three years.
Most common forklift power system design mistakes
Four of the most common mistakes are associated with how a company designs its forklift power system, which includes not just the battery but also chargers and changers.
- Not considering your batteries as part of a power system. Your system design should be based on more than just the forklift’s battery specification. The best power systems are built after an assessment of your facility’s applications and workflows, such as when and how batteries are watered. To drive higher uptimes and longer battery life, companies need to optimizing not just for everything they do today but also consider their future plans.
- Using the wrong charger. Many companies, trying to save a little money, switch to new batteries but use old, mismatched chargers. For example, they change their batteries every five years, but only buy new chargers every 10-20 years. While the battery technology has improved, the charger (the intelligence) hasn’t, and that means they may not be getting the most out of their new battery equipment as far as charge profiles and efficiency. This shortens battery life, drives up power bills, and in the long term, ends up being more expensive than simply buying new chargers.
- Having malfunctioning chargers. Chargers are designed to provide power to batteries up until 100% capacity. When a new model of charger is unable to provide full power, it is often due to malfunctioning power modules or communications issues between battery modules and the charger itself. Additionally, older style high frequency (HF), silicon controlled rectifier (SCR), and Ferro chargers may experience output capacity drop off due to malfunctioning fuses, diodes, SCRs, insulated-gate bipolar transistors (IGBTs), and capacitors. If left unchecked, the reduced output of these chargers will cause batteries to sulfate and ultimately fail.
- Not planning a charging standard operating procedure (SOP) in advance. Most companies charge when it’s best for the operator, but it’s important to set up a charging schedule that also takes into account the needs of your facility and your batteries. A schedule that accommodates both the operator’s and the battery’s needs will lengthen lifespan tremendously. This requires regular monitoring to ensure compliance with the charging SOP. If this is not maintained, batteries will often fail due to the lack of consistent charging.
Most common forklift power maintenance mistakes
The remaining common mistakes focus on how a company maintains its batteries and chargers.
- Not implementing an equalization schedule. Lead acid batteries require an equalization charge on a regular basis to maintain their long-term health and capacity. Build a plan for equalization into your battery charger plug-up times, then set those schedules into your chargers.
- Not watering correctly. Batteries need to be watered on a schedule. Ideally, batteries are watered right after charging to avoid electrolyte overflow issues, chemical spills, and degradation. Proper water levels ensure electrolytes stay in balance and batteries don’t overheat. These expensive mistakes add up over time.
- Having a malfunctioning single-point watering system. Single-point watering systems are employed for labor savings in the weekly watering of batteries. While useful, these systems are subject to failure due to abuse and just normal wear and tear. Oftentimes, these systems will fail at individual watering points and are not noticeably malfunctioning. This will lead to unequal watering and ultimately a series of battery failure points over time. This too must be regularly monitored for proper function.
- Not responding swiftly to maintenance issues. It’s important to set up a maintenance schedule so you can ensure every battery and charger gets attention when it should. Early identification of issues, paired with course correction, can nip issues in the bud, greatly extending the life of your equipment.
Your forklift batteries are the preservers of power at your facility. If properly cared for, they power smooth and reliable operations that keep downtime at bay. The unexpected can and will happen every single year—that’s just a part of business. But the expected, that is something we can prepare for. Companies that take a proactive approach to their power and their facility’s unique power are poised to take on any challenge with an uninterrupted power supply.
