Forklift truck batteries represent a high cost to a warehouse's operation costs, increasing with overuse or misuse of the battery. Conversely, an efficient battery will improve a site's productivity and profitability. Without a cost-effective way to monitor the usage and care of a battery, companies have been unable to improve the site's procedures—the result: increased labour and maintenance costs and premature battery failure.

The eGO! has been designed with demanding materials handling environments in mind and tells you everything you need to know about the life history of a battery. It measures performance and predicts when a battery will need to be replaced, helping to identify potential issues before they cause expensive damage and providing information that can help make financial buying decisions.

The eGO! is mounted on the battery and continuously monitors the cycles, opportunity charging, voltage, electrolyte level, and battery temperature. It has bright LEDs that indicate the electrolyte level and temperature status of the battery, helping operatives to maintain the battery correctly. The data the eGO! collects is simply downloaded, via a wireless connection, to a PC or laptop where it is summarized into helpful information. This history can be viewed from anywhere on the internet, where a summary of the key performance indicators and life predictions is available.

Expensive assets are almost always monitored to record how they are being used. While a forklift truck has an hour meter and a service record to help estimate the usage level, the usage of the battery has remained a mystery. With the eGO! this no longer has to be the case.

The eGO! provides useable information

The eGO! interprets data to provide essential life history information that can be used to make decisions. A summary of the entire life of the battery can be downloaded manually or automatically in less than 3 seconds to a PC or laptop. The summary includes the leading performance indicators, including:

• Cycles
• Opportunity charging
• Voltage
• Temperature
• Electrolyte level 

The downloaded data can be sent either manually or automatically to batterymanagement.net, where it can be stored indefinitely. Once received on itagworld.com, the data is used to provide information on the usage of the battery and, importantly, on the predicted life of the battery. This information can be viewed from anywhere in the world. By evaluating all the age, use and abuse information, the eGO! can provide an accurate estimate on the number of days that the battery will last before it requires replacement. The eGO! replaces guesswork with useful information. 

By reviewing battery usage, battery users can be better educated in the consequences of improper use, and contracts can be re-evaluated based on accurate usage information. The eGO! helps to assign accountability for improper usage to the user.