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Let there be light
Page 57
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Gray & Adams has an enlightening way of ensuring Reed Boardall's trucks are never short of battery power... a solar charger.
Wards: Brian Weatherley Operating out of its Boroughbridge site off the Al (M), the Reed Boardall Group has one of the UK's largest temperature-controlled fleets, delivering goods worth around flOrri every day. It is also a major user of double-deck reefer trailers (having been one of the early adopters of the twin-deck design pioneered by the Fraserburgh-based refrigerated trailer-maker Gray & Adams,). Within its latest fleet replacement programme for 62 trailers, the company has recently taken delivery of 12 G&A 40-pallet double-deckers.
From the outside, they look like regular twin-deck aerodynamic reefers with Carrier fridge units on the front. But on the sloping roof section there is a solar panel used to charge the trailer's lifting deck battery. The recharger is made up of two sections, each measuring 1,000mm x 500mm, which sit on a stainless-steel plate with a front deflector bonded on to the trailer roof. "When the vehicle is sitting in sunlight, they trickle charge the batteries with an average output of 2A in bright sunshine," explains G&A group electrical manager Dave Smith, adding they are very robust. -They work in six inches of snow and can withstand the impact of half-inch hail-stones."
The G&A trailers have two, 12-volt, 1,000Ah gel-cyclic batteries which, when fully charged, provide enough power for up to 7.5-cycles of the deck in a stand-alone 'emergency' use. Tom Cassells, Reed Boardall's managing director of transport, says: "It's a Gray & Adams idea. The batteries on the trailer provide enough power to do a couple of cycles without an Anderson lead. On earlier [G&A] versions, we ran with the side lights to power the batteries, hut drivers had to remember to put them on. The panels are really there to keep the battery in good shape if we need to use them for [emergency] deck operation."
Being mounted on the trailer roof, the panels will be subjected to road dirt and grime, not least during the winter months, which could affect their performance. Cassells explains: "They won't work unless they're clean, so they'll go through an auto brush wash that goes over the roof every time the trailers return to the yard."
Charging the batteries
While the Reed Boardall double-deckers are normally loading at premises that either have their own Anderson leads, or remain attached to the tractor that provides electrical power for the moving decks, having the solar panels on the roof of the new trailers ensures their batteries are always ready to perform any limited standalone deck cycle operation. This means the flexibility of the trailer is enhanced.
According to Reed Boardall's compliance manager, Denzil Cooke, with the new solar-panel equipped doubledeckers: "The panels are photovoltaic, which means that whether or not the sun is shining, they are constantly helping to charge the batteries. We're certainly experiencing fewer call outs for fait batteries" The cost of the solar panel is typically around MOO. Set that against the cost of an engineer call-out and, more importantly. the loss of a valuable trailer with unscheduled downtime and it starts to look distinctly attractive.
Moreover, in addition to providing power for limited stand-alone deck operations, having the battery constantly charged "keeps them in tip-top condition", says Cassells. This means there is also uninterrupted power for G&A's Codesys onboard trailer diagnostics system, which can quickly alert a service engineer to any problem within the twin-deck trailers, whether the problems are electrical or hydraulic. •