Forklift batteries need to be recharged regularly. Normal practice is to remove them from the forklifts and place them in battery storage systems to be recharged. To determine how much space to dedicate to storage, managers will have to get an idea of how many cells will be idle at any given time.
Cycles vs. Life
Every time a power cell is partially discharged and then recharged, this is called a cycle. The type and frequency of cycles has a major effect on the life of the unit. The shallower the cycle, meaning the less of the total power is discharged from the battery before recharging, the longer the life.
Some manufacturers use this shallow-cycle phenomenon to exaggerate the useful life of a battery. A cell might be rated for 20 years but reading the fine print reveals that is if it is discharged only 5%. A more realistic 50% discharge could easily cut the cell's useful life to 5 years or less. However users can use this to extend the life by not discharging batteries fully before putting them in battery storage systems for recharge.
Industrial Cycle Realities
Ideally a unit would be discharged very slightly and then recharged. This would give the unit a very long life but would cut productivity to nothing. Changing batteries takes time and effort, and during the replacement phase that forklift is not operating. A change is also dangerous and handling these heavy, acid-filled objects more often than necessary increases the chance of worker injury even when using the proper lift equipment and safety protocols.
To minimize forklift downtime, some plants unwisely run vehicles to near zero charge before changing them out. They don't consider that this deep cycling reduces the life and ultimately leads to more frequent replacement. By trying to save money by reducing downtime, they increase expenses for new power cell purchase.
Change Once Per Shift
In a plant that works one shift per day, standard procedure is to move cells to battery storage systems in the evening to allow them to recharge overnight. This is typically a good balance between relatively shallow cycling and reasonable production loss. This requires storage equal to the number of batteries in use.
For facilities that work two or three shifts per day, a similar schedule tends to work out. As each shift goes off the batteries are removed for recharging and immediately replaced with newly charged units from storage systems. Because of the overhead when swapping batteries, desired storage is typically equal to the number of batteries in use times the number of shifts per day. So a facility working three shifts with ten forklifts would likely have battery storage systems to handle thirty units.
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