Hyster Company has announced the receipt of a grant from California Climate Investments (CCI) to support the development of a zero-emissions container handling truck powered by a Nuvera fuel cell. The funding, awarded by the California Air Resources Board (CARB), part of CCI, the state of California's climate change-fighting, cap-and-trade program, aims to help Hyster and its partners develop a zero-emissions container handler for an end-user in the Port of Los Angeles. To receive the award, recipients must meet defined business practices and overall rigorous performance measurement standards. These standards are reviewed and updated annually to represent the most critical business activities and performance excellence principles necessary to keep pace with evolving customer expectations and industry dynamics.
The Hyster electric laden container handler entering development is intended to be powered by a Nuvera fuel cell combined with a lithium-ion battery. This follows the news released in 2017 that a Hyster H1150HD-CH container handling truck with fully electric motors and a large lithium-ion battery has entered the test phase.
"The right power option for a truck will always depend on the specific operation," says Lyndle McCurley, Vice President, Big Truck Sales Americas for Hyster Company. "Whereas the large lithium-ion battery is expected to suit those applications with a medium duty cycle where opportunity charging is possible, we anticipate the truck powered by a battery re-charged by an onboard fuel cell will better suit the challenges of this particular end-user in the Port of L.A."
The Hyster zero emissions top-loader with a fuel cell and lithium-ion battery has the potential to effectively support applications with higher power consumption and a heavy duty cycle as the truck is expected to operate for a full day before requiring hydrogen re-fueling. As the truck can also operate for longer before battery re-charging is needed, this also supports operations with irregular break periods, where it may not be practical to plan in battery charging throughout the day.
Hyster aims to offer the fuel cell and battery powered Container Handler with a choice of charging options. The model in development is expected to utilize fully integrated wireless fast charging.
"Hydrogen and grid power provide complementary power solutions for ports," says McCurley. "Where the requirements to power a fleet of electric Big Trucks are likely to exceed power capabilities of the grid, hydrogen may provide ports with readily available energy without a requirement for a high capacity electric charging infrastructure."
"Electric charging for a large number of trucks during the day also adds complexity to overall work planning in the terminal, which can be avoided using hydrogen," he continues, explaining that with hydrogen fuel cell technology, Hyster expects the Big Truck in development to offer ‘clean' energy with zero emissions, as well as a low cost of ownership and comparable performance to its diesel equivalent.
The new fuel cell-powered truck is also expected to benefit from the patented Hyster energy recovery systems revealed earlier in 2018 at the TOC Europe event in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. By recovering and storing energy from lowering loads and braking, Hyster electric container handling trucks are expected to support an extended drive cycle, providing longer operating time before recharge is necessary. The innovative systems aim to increase uptime and profitability for port applications while also helping to reduce energy costs for charging.
