Disclosed on 24 October, Plug Power Inc's next-generation GenDrive hydrogen fuel cell line offers enhancements intended to increase reliability and boost lifting and towing capacities.
Based in Latham near Albany, New York, Plug Power is a leader in the market for clean and reliable energy products with its drop-in replacement for lead-acid batteries in electric forklifts.
Plug Power has created a simplified architecture and a common system platform that contains 30% fewer components than earlier GenDrive technology.
"With our application knowledge and advanced technical capabilities, Plug Power has been able to enhance our GenDrive product offerings in a way that simplifies the system and reduces the parts necessary to manufacture the units," says Adrian Corless, chief technology officer. "The customer benefits from improved reliability and performance within their (forklift) fleet."
Plug Power began the next-generation development after acquiring two British Columbia-based materials handling market suppliers - Cellex Power Products Inc in April 2007 for USD46.1 million and General Hydrogen Corp in May 2007 for USD12.4 million.
"At the time, we had three separate platforms for GenDrive," says Reid Hislop, Plug Power vice president of marketing and investor relations. "Real earnest development has been under way for the last two years" en route toward the Plug Power goal of one common platform.
The reduction in parts evolves from using the same, or similar, electrical and air processing components across all three GenDrive classes. In addition, "the new low power Class 3 unit is air cooled, eliminating all or most of the water management components", Hislop says.
Publicly traded Plug Power demonstrated capabilities of the next-generation line and conducted an inaugural free customer-site one-week-long-demonstration contest during the International Foodservice Distributors Association conference on 24-26 October in Fort Worth, Texas. "Our demo program continues to draw folks to the booth," Hislop reports. "This was our first attempt with this type of program, but you can expect to see it at Modex" on 6-9 February in Atlanta, Georgia.
Plug Power has shipped more than 1,200 GenDrive units to materials handling customers. The units have accumulated more than five million hours of runtime.