TCE | Electric and hybrid platforms, highly sustainable lifting with Flash Battery and Easy Lift

Flash Battery lithium batteries are the heart of EasyLift tracked aerial platforms

When talking about overhead work you automatically think of huge, imposing, noisy machines.
But what if instead a light, silent, lithium battery was enough to lift an operator onto a roof or into the highest branches of a tree?

This was the challenge overcome by Easy Lift in 2012 when they decided to entrust the energy transition of their tracked aerial platforms to Flash Battery. They produce and market these vehicles all over the world and up until then they had been shackled by the limits imposed by traditional lead batteries: long recharging times, high maintenance costs, low energy efficiency, etc.

Today overhead work can be conducted sustainably using tracked Easy Lift aerial platforms with electrical or hybrid drives equipped with Flash Battery lithium batteries.

Innovation and sustainability have been a winning combination for some time, and are no longer the exclusive prerogative of visionary entrepreneurs. Concepts like innovation and sustainability are also finally becoming the order of the day in political programmes and development policies in Italy.

Operators like Flash Battery and Easy Lift are perfect examples of virtuous companies who were able to anticipate innovation in the electrification sphere when this was still in its infancy.

By now Flash Battery has become an authority in Italy both as regards lithium batteries, and the energy transition in general.

In addition to being awarded the prestigious Premio dei Premi for innovation, presented directly by the President of the Italian Republic, Sergio Mattarella, in December 2020, once again on 9 February 2021 Flash Battery found themselves in the centre of a very important event in the Italian world of sustainable electrical transport. The CEO and founder of Flash Battery, Marco Righi, was invited as a speaker to the Electric Days Digital, an international event dedicated to electrification of transport, where he narrated the industrial experience of Flash Battery in a talk titled, “Lithium batteries Made in Italy: it can be done”.

Sustainability and innovation are thus in the DNA of Flash Battery. As early as 2012 Easy Lift decided to introduce more sustainable and higher performance solutions to the lifting market, making use of Flash Battery lithium technology.
The result of that partnership goes beyond environmental sustainability, already a significant achievement, also achieving high levels of economic and operative sustainability.

Easy Lift’s aim right from the start was to optimise the performance of their aerial platforms, overcoming the obstacles and operational limits posed by lead batteries. Thanks to the active support and a joint study with the leading Reggio Emilia company in the design and production of lithium batteries for the industrial sector, they were able to smoothly implement this technological jump offering many advantages.

Flash Battery lithium batteries provide Easy Lift’s aerial platforms with high energy efficiency (over 25% more compared to lead batteries) and the capacity to work continuously thanks to the option of implementing quick and partial charging, eliminating the need for dedicated charging rooms, reducing overall costs, and avoiding the long machine down-times required for charging lead batteries.

Installing Flash Battery lithium batteries offers 4 more important advantages for the Easy Lift platforms:

1. Increased vehicle operating time: Flash Battery packs are smaller, lighter, and less bulky than traditional lead batteries, thus making platforms fitted with them lighter and more efficient.
2. Reduced machine down-times: thanks to rapid and partial recharging, the platforms can be used throughout the charging time. Furthermore, the absence of routine maintenance (instead very frequent with lead batteries) makes the operation of the platforms more flexible and continuous.
3. Batteries made to measure for each platform: one of the distinct features of Flash Battery is their capacity for customising batteries, the result of careful design analysis conducted hands-on with the customer, enabling Easy Lift to design customised batteries to satisfy the requirements of different types of platform.
4. Zero emissions and zero acid leakage: which makes charging possible anywhere, even in closed environments.

Easy Lift referred to Flash Battery with the need to change from lead to lithium for powering aerial platforms, in order to optimise the performance of their tracked platforms as far as possible.
Flash Battery responded with a solution customised to the needs of the customer: lithium batteries of 51.2 V / 200 Ah.

Today all the Easy Lift version BA and HY tracked aerial platforms are fitted with Flash Battery lithium batteries.
On the smaller platforms Flash Battery completely replaces the internal combustion engine, while on the larger models it supports the engine making the platform hybrid and thus more sustainable while improving performance.

Flash Battery in the platform world

The aerial platforms sector was the first to acknowledge the need to equip themselves with lithium batteries. The earliest requests to Flash Battery for applications date back to 2010 to 2012, more or less the same time that Flash Battery lithium batteries started being used in the AGV sector (editor’s note: Automated Guided Vehicles, the self-driving lift trucks used in warehouse handling and logistics). PLEs integrate better with lithium based electrical operation because maintenance is zeroed, the weight is 1/3 compared to lead, and fast charging enables partial recharging during use without having to wait long periods for recharging.
One of the distinctive features that enabled Flash Battery to establish connections with the main OEMs in the platform sector was customised design.

Customised design

Every new Flash Battery project starts by carefully listening to the customer’s needs, proceeds with collaborative design, takes form as a customised product, and develops through constant comparison in order to achieve ever greater optimisations and satisfy new demands as they arise. For Flash Battery every customer is a unique project.