Linamar Corporation’s (TSX:LNR) Skyjack division has developed a digital product, ELEVATE Battery Management System (BMS), that is designed to help drive the battery health of a rental company’s fleet towards longer battery life. Extending battery life is a key goal for many rental companies as battery issues are one of the main drivers of service calls, and one of the largest contributors to a rental company’s cost of ownership. Skyjack’s ELEVATE BMS means that rental companies can benefit without resorting to expensive and complex alternatives, such as anti-sulfation over-charging. It also allows for a fleet wide solution for industry standard lead-acid battery packs without the added expense of new battery technology.

ELEVATE BMS provides the tools in clear and simple terms to measure battery pack treatment while in the field. These actionable insights can be applied to existing rental business processes, having an immediate impact reducing how often rental companies have to replace batteries. This management by measurement is a critical missing piece to increasing rental companies’ overall return on investment on electric powered machines.

“Since the inception of the ELEVATE telematics package, Skyjack have focused on actionable insights and so ELEVATE BMS is integrated into all ELEVATE software including Skyjack’s new ELEVATE Live,” explains Malcolm Early, vice president of marketing at Skyjack. “We identified that batteries are currently sitting at an average battery life that is only half their potential. Getting these insights into the hands of all industry roles is critical to meeting that potential.”

Following the launch of its ELEVATE telematics package Skyjack has found that most of Skyjack’s customers are choosing to share their data with the OEM, which enables Skyjack to dig into how equipment is being used on-site. Through the support and collaborative partnership with its customers, Skyjack was able to launch a data science study analyzing how equipment is used, and how behavior surrounding that can be improved. This study helped identify the issues and inform the development of the ELEVATE BMS product.

“We’ve taken what can be a complex problem, broken it down into its fundamental components, and we’ve learned some valuable things from this exercise. This study involves two years of aggregated global telematics data, with over 84 million data points,” explains David Swan, technology product manager at Skyjack. “What we have developed is an algorithm that can successfully identify the different features of charging data with high accuracy, which requires effectively understanding and interpreting all of the edge cases of those features.”

Through this study of battery pack charging behavior the following insights were revealed:
• 75% of battery charges are less than 2.75 hours
• Batteries only receive ONE full charge a month
• The type of the battery is not the only thing limiting its lifespan; it is the lack of insight to how that battery is treated that leads to premature battery failure and an inflated cost of ownership
• Even the most technologically advanced battery underperforms if it is treated poorly

“Looking at the results from the study it’s clear that there is a lot of opportunity for better practices and greater profitability with rental companies current stock of lead-acid batteries,” Swan continues. “A lot of that opportunity is at the operator level and that’s why we incorporated ELEVATE BMS into our new ELEVATE Live product where the emphasis is on changing charging behavior through active on screen prompts directed toward the operator.”

A Whitepaper Learning from the data: The impact of battery management trends prepared by Skyjack is available which gives more insights in to the study.