Have you ever looked at the problem of flat battery related costs within your refrigerated fleet? From battery related breakdowns to premature battery replacements and even the indirect costs associated with downtime or poor fleet reliability such as late delivery fees or rejected loads, these costs all add up.
Most of our solar customers didn’t even realise they had a problem before investigating the numbers or even worse, they just accepted these costs because they’ve never had a way of mitigating them before now! By adding a solar panel to the roof of your temperature-controlled trailer, the fridge battery can be ‘trickle charged’ to keep the battery constantly topped up.
As well as the improved fleet uptime and reliability achieved by mitigating breakdowns; battery health is also protected giving a longer battery life and there is an environmental benefit due to less replacement batteries being needed over the fleet’s lifetime.
With the installation of a Genie Insights high efficiency 50 watt solar panel adding just a nominal amount to a trailer that costs anywhere between £40k and £60k, depending on the trailer spec, Genie Insights’ customers explain that it is a “no brainer”.
We have launched a calculator, which provides operators with an indication of how much they could save over their fleets’ lifetime by installing one of the company’s solar panels. By inputting just a few details, the calculator provides a total potential saving in battery replacements and in reduced breakdowns.
The calculator shows that an operator with a fleet of 200 refrigerated trailers could potentially save £192,000* over the lifetime of the entire fleet.
And it seems operators can benefit no matter what size of fleet they operate. For example, a fleet of just 10 trailers could save £9,600* and a fleet of 1,000 trailers could potentially save £960,000* over the lifetime of the fleet.
* These calculations are based on the following data:
Typical trailer lifespan of 8 years
Battery replacement cycle of every 2 years
Number of battery related breakdowns per month based on 5% of the total fleet
Battery replacement cost of £200
Breakdown cost (parts and labour) of £200
