In a warehouse environment, your forklift battery’s capacity and performance play a critical role in workplace productivity. Whether you are a licensed forklift operator or work with a team that operates forklifts, keeping your forklift battery charged at all times ensures that things run smoothly.
However, if you aren’t sure how to test your forklift, you must learn the proper technique for safety purposes. With that in mind, here is a guide on how to properly test your forklift battery.
Learn About Its Battery Capacity
If you don’t know already, a battery’s capacity refers to how much energy it can store. Essentially, when you are testing your battery, you are measuring how much current your battery releases at a constant rate for a specific time to a certain end voltage.
Forklift battery suppliers give each model a rating for users to identify its capacity. Nonetheless, as the cells in the battery age, the rating becomes inaccurate due to the wear and tear from everyday use. Routine tests allow forklift operators to learn about a battery’s true capacity on any given day.
Address All Battery Capacity Components With a Monitoring Device
Using the right monitoring device is critical for assessing your battery’s capacity accurately. Battery monitoring devices come with different tools to determine various criteria related to a battery’s capacity, such as its total discharge time, water and electrolyte levels, the amount of discharge cycles, and the battery’s temperature, current, and voltage.
Typically, forklift operators will download this data from their monitoring device to their PC or laptop to analyze it further. Computers allow you to analyze an entire fleet of forklift batteries all at once, which helps you identify battery usage patterns. Generating reports from your monitoring data on a computer also informs you about things your device might not have picked up, such as battery faults.
Understand the Importance of Testing
Unless you have an unlimited budget, understanding the importance of battery testing will not only save you money from having to replace faulty batteries, but it will also keep you safe. Regular battery tests help you identify which cells are weak, subpar intercell connectors, and other detractors from exemplary battery performance.
Without consistent battery testing, you won’t be able to identify critical factors that affect your battery before it stops working. A dead battery can come at the worst times, especially when a forklift is in transit.
Overall, regular forklift battery testing is a cornerstone of a well-run warehouse. Now that you know how to properly test your forklift battery, you can look forward to working without hassles.
