The right track to efficient battery charging

The Ri charging process presented some time ago by the Austrian company Fronius, the specialist in charging traction batteries in electrically-powered forklift trucks, aroused a great deal of interest. Some users are already applying the new charging method and benefiting from the advantages of this new technology. This report is intended for those who want to get to grips with the subject in greater depth and become better acquainted with how the Ri charging process works. The focus has been on continually optimising the efficiency of electrically-powered forklift trucks for many years. The aim has and will always be to make productive use of new technological findings in the power train, the electronic control system and the storage of electrical energy. As before, the issue of energy storage in particular is right at the top of the agenda for researchers and developers. Directly connected with this, of course, is the charging of re-chargeable storage devices, which from now on we will call batteries - in keeping with the colloquial name - although the technically correct name is rechargeable batteries. Tried and tested for over 100 years, the lead acid battery is still the most commonly used energy storage device in forklift trucks with electric motors. In a battery like this, electrical energy is converted into chemical energy during charging. When a consumer is connected, the chemical energy is converted back to electrical energy. Continual changes have been made to the charging method over time: it has come a long way from the early days of the first 50 Hz transformer chargers with an unregulated charging process, to high frequency (HF) chargers with a regulated charging process and then microprocessor-controlled battery charging systems with complex charging algorithms. The best-known and most widespread charging method in intralogistics nowadays is the IUI charging method. Fronius, a developer and manufacturer of battery charging systems since 1946, has initiated a new approach for charging a lead acid traction battery, the “Ri charging process”. The way in which this approach differs from other charging methods and the advantages it brings for energy efficiency and charging efficiency will be explained in the special article under the following link.