Solar Power for Your Truck or Trailer Refrigeration Unit
Carrier Transicold Thin Film Flexible Solar Panels are designed to maintain the refrigeration unit’s battery charge. Photo: Carrier Transicold
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Carrier Transicold Thin Film Flexible Solar Panels are designed to maintain the refrigeration unit’s battery charge. Photo: Carrier Transicold
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Transport refrigeration system batteries are increasingly being tapped to power additional electronics such as telematics devices, fuel-level sensors, interior trailer lighting and other accessories. Because these accessories can continue to draw power – sometimes up to a few amps per hour – while the refrigeration unit is off, the reefer battery might not have enough charge to start the engine if the unit has not been operated for some time. That could mean an expensive jump-start, and it also means trailers drop off of asset-tracking systems.
But solar power options are coming to the rescue for some fleets.
K&J Trucking started testing Thermo King’s ThermoLite solar panels four years ago on five trailers. After two years, the Sioux Falls, South Dakota-based refrigerated fleet liked the results well enough to spec them on a new trailer order replacing half its trailer fleet. By that point the return on investment was clear, according to Maintenance Manager Lou Charette.
“The solar option works well for us on the reefer end, because trailers get into places [where they shouldn’t], and with tracking devices they tend to drain batteries in a two-to three-week period,” he says. “A trailer shouldn’t sit that long, but they do, it’s as simple as that. With this, the battery is constantly ready.
“It makes it so we can spot the trailer at any time, because if the battery goes dead, the GPS tracking goes out.” The solar option also eliminates middle-of-the-night service calls for jump-starting, “and any service call starts at $300 these days.”
In addition, battery life has been significantly extended.
Thermo King’s ThermoLite solar panel solution was developed to provide an alternative power source to both refrigerated and dry van fleets and offset battery drain from …Read the rest of this story
