Forklifts Find Big Boost from Fuel Cells

Forklifts Find Big Boost from Fuel Cells

By Jennifer Gangi, Program Director, Fuel Cells 2000

The United States is the undisputed world leader in fuel cell forklift deployment. More than 2,000 are operating in the field or on order, from both new and repeat customers, and companies are finding their investment is paying off.

In 2009, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) awarded $9.7 million of American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) funds for fuel cell forklifts. Combined with industry's cost share of around $11.84 million, the ARRA has helped deployed more than 360 fuel cell-powered forklifts, with more than a hundred more coming down the pike. Since receiving that initial ARRA funding, several of the recipients, including large distributors like Sysco Corporation, have returned to the table, purchasing additional units on their own dime. There are many new customers entering the fuel cell arena as well, buying systems without government funding.

Fuel cell forklifts have moved well past the demonstration stage to commercial sales and are providing customers with benefits on multiple fronts – savings in emissions, labor costs, fuel and most importantly, time. DOE's analysis of the forklifts deployed via the ARRA conclude that fuel cells provide 1.5 times lower maintenance cost, eight times lower refueling/recharging labor cost, and two times lower net present value of total system cost compared to batteries.

This growth in the materials handling market has spurred not only the fuel cell industry, supply chain and infrastructure, but also the forklift manufacturing industry and dealerships, some of which are offering fuel cells in their product catalogs. Crown Equipment Corporation, a leading forklift manufacturer, has launched a Fuel Cell Qualification program, the first of its kind within the forklift industry, and has qualified 20 of its electric forklift models to operate with various fuel cells. The company now offers 29 qualified combinations of fuel cell packs and trucks and conducts its fuel cell testing at a 25,000-square-foot (sq. ft.) research facility near Dayton, Ohio, that is dedicated solely to this purpose.

Under a three-year contract from DOE, the LiftOne division of Carolina Tractor, a material handling dealership focused on North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia, has been running a fuel cell trial program for the past two years. The company conducted six, one-month deployments of two hydrogen fuel cell powered lift trucks at large electric fleet user locations including Electrolux, AGI, Bausch & Lomb, Stanley Tool and BMW. LiftOne also conducted Hydrogen Education Seminars at each of these user sites as well as at local colleges and first responder sites.

New Players

The LiftOne trials made a believer out of BMW. Without any government funding, the automaker purchased 86 Plug Power GenDrive™ fuel cells to power vehicles for its new Spartanburg, South Carolina, BMW X3 Sports Activity Vehicle® manufacturing plant. These fuel cell-powered forklifts make up the plant's entire fleet, and BMW Manufacturing estimates they will avoid 1.8 million kilowatt hours per year of electricity consumption at the plant that would have been used to charge a battery-powered fleet. To fuel the vehicles, BMW installed six Linde hydrogen dispensers that will use the hydrogen by-product of a sodium chlorate plant that is purified, compressed and liquefied by using electricity produced from renewable hydropower. BMW is also launching a $1 million multi-phase project aimed at converting some of the methane it collects from the nearby Palmetto Landfill in Wellford, South Carolina, into hydrogen.

Fuel Cell Forklift, Aisle 5

Grocery and food distribution centers have been a main market for fuel cell forklifts. Customers already include grocery chains Wegmans and Whole Foods, as well as distributors and wholesalers such as U.S. Foodservice, Central Grocers, United Natural Foods, Inc., and Super Store Industries. Recently some new players not only entered the fuel cell arena, but did so with pretty large purchases.

For its food distribution center in Compton, California, Kroger Co. recently purchased 161 Plug Power GenDrive™ fuel cell systems - 4 Class-1 GenDrive™ units for sit down counterbalanced trucks, 42 Class-2 units for reach trucks and 115 Class-3 units for pallet trucks.

WinCo Foods LLC, an employee-owned grocery chain with 79 stores in six states, purchased 184 Plug Power GenDrive™ systems through a five-year lease with Somerset Capital Group. The 93 class-3 units (pallet jacks); 38 class-2 units (stand-up counterbalance trucks); and 53 class-2 units (European-style moving mast lift trucks) will be deployed at WinCo's 800,000 sq. ft. grocery distribution center in Modesto, California.

Repeat Customers

After an initial purchase of 220 fuel cells for its brand-new distribution center in Joliet, Illinois in 2008, Central Grocers, Inc. recently purchased an additional eleven Plug Power GenDrive™ fuel cell units to be integrated into eight class-2 stand up reach truck units and three class-1 three wheel sit down counterbalanced truck units. Once the company decided to make the entire fleet at the new facility fuel cell-powered, the need to build a battery charging and changing room was eliminated, reducing capital investment and opening up valuable floor space for more product.


Coca-Cola Refreshments has purchased a new fleet of 37 Plug Power GenDrive™-powered Caterpillar lift trucks for its 250,000 sq. ft. bottling and distribution center in San Leandro, California. By removing the infrastructure associated with the lead-acid battery charging, changing and maintenance, Coca-Cola will recover more than 2,000 sq. ft. of facility space to use for other business operations. They will also reduce the facility's electrical consumption approximately 1.6 million kWh per year. Coca-Cola already has 40 fuel cell forklifts at its Charlotte, North Carolina, bottling facility.

Plug Power also received a third purchase order from Sysco Corporation for 100 GenDrive™ systems to power the electric truck fleet at its Front Royal, Virginia Baugh Northeast Co-op, Inc. redistribution facility. The company already has fuel cells running in Houston, Texas and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Sysco announced plans to convert an additional 500-plus battery-powered lift trucks to fuel cell power at seven additional sites over the next 24 months and has already purchased 315 additional fuel cell systems to convert fleets at its San Antonio, Texas (113), Long Island, New York (42), and Boston, Massachusetts (160) regional distribution center facilities. Sysco is also considering additional fuel cell fleet conversions for its Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Boston facilities

Methanol Making Strides

Oorja Protonics is going a different route than the hydrogen-fueled fuel cell forklift, but still finding success in the materials handling market. The company has deployed many of its OorjaPac methanol-fueled on-board battery charger to numerous customers including Nissan North America, Golden State Foods and others. The OorjaPac eliminates the need for battery swapping and rapid charging. Oorja also is boasting repeat customers already – Martin-Brower, one of McDonald's main distributors, placed a second purchase order for more OorjaPac Model I's for its Stockton, California, food distribution center.


Oorja has also recently joined with the U.S. DOE's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) on a two-year project to deploy and demonstrate its direct methanol fuel cells (DMFC) for Class 3 power pallet jacks in four commercial wholesale distribution centers. The total cost of the project is just over $2 million, with NREL, responsible for collecting and analyzing data, contributing $920,000 and Oorja providing $1.4 million.

The project entails 15-month deployments of 75 DMFC-powered Class III material handling lifts at warehouses operated by Unified Grocers, EARP Distribution, and Testa Produce - running two shifts per day, 6 days per week – about 5,000 total operation hours for each unit. As of May 2011, 24 have been delivered to EARP Distribution, the sole wholesale provider of foods and goods to approximately 450 restaurants, for their Kansas City, Kansas, distribution center. Testa Produce has ordered 20 OorjaPacs for its Chicago, Illinois distribution center to power its Walkie Rider Material Moving Machines. The remaining fuel cells will go to Unified Grocers for its Stockton and Commerce, California facilities.

Military Might

The corporate world isn't the only customer base providing repeat business for fuel cell companies. The Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) of the U.S. Department of Defense uses fuel cell-powered equipment at several distribution facilities around the country. The Susquehanna Defense Distribution Supply Depot (DDSP) in New Cumberland, Pennsylvania, already had 20 forklifts powered by Nuvera Fuel Cells, Inc. PowerEdge RL25 fuel cell units at its 1.5 million sq. ft. distribution center, the largest in the U.S. DDSP ordered 18 more units from Nuvera and is currently powering 15 more Class I counter balance forklifts.

New Kid on the Block

Infintium Fuel Cell Systems has developed the EnerPac™ fuel cell product line to replace lead-acid batteries in a range of utility vehicles, and has completed thousands of hours of real-world demonstration projects. Infintium's 48-volt Class I EnerPac fuel cell power system was installed in a Hyster E50XM and operated at a battery manufacturer and equipment dealer. The company also demonstrated its 36-volt Class II EnerPac fuel cell power system at a battery manufacturer for months and its 24-volt Class II EnerPac fuel cell power system was installed in a Mitsubishi EOP15 and also operated at a battery manufacturer and equipment dealer.

Forklift Fuel-up

Several industrial gas companies such as Air Products and Linde Gas have facilitated the deployment of fuel cell-powered forklifts by helping install the hydrogen dispensing equipment at the facilities, sometimes with multiple dispensers spread out around the grounds.

GENCO ATC, a third-party logistics provider, received ARRA funding to deploy the forklifts in use at Coca-Cola, Whole Foods, Wegmans , Sysco and Kimberly-Clark warehouses. At these facilities, GENCO worked with either Air Products or Linde to install a hydrogen dispensing network. Forklift operators are trained to fuel vehicles themselves, which can be done in minutes, saving valuable time and the inconvenience of battery changing. Sysco, at its facility in Houston, trained over 100 employees on operation and safety of hydrogen use. The company also claims that the current cost of hydrogen is approximately the same as the cost of electricity to charge lead-acid batteries, and that the fuel cell performance is much better.

GENCO also worked with Plug Power and Kimberly-Clark Corporation to open the nation's first multi-use industrial park hydrogen fueling station in Graniteville, South Carolina. Kimberly-Clark's 450,000 square foot distribution facility is located in the park and will fuel its 25 GenDrive®-powered Toyota electric lift trucks at the station.

At Wegmans' Pottsville, Pennsylvania, warehouse, there is a fueling station in the produce building and two fueling stations in the grocery building to fuel 136 forklifts. The two grocery stations were not part of the ARRA-funded scope of work. The Whole Foods hydrogen station installed by Linde also was funded outside of the scope of the GENCO ARRA funding.

Other companies are working with the hydrogen providers directly. FedEx worked with Air Products for the fueling and storage equipment to support its 35 GenDrive™ class-1 power forklifts at its Springfield, Missouri, service center. This included two indoor dispensers that do about 1-2 fuelings per day per forklift, with an average refuel time of about 4 minutes. As of May 2011, FedEx reported more than 6,000 fuelings.

European Activity

In Europe, fuel cell forklifts are still primarily in the demonstration stage. One company, H2 Logic, has introduced its hydrogen fuel cell system for forklifts, named H2Drive™, but no sales have been reported. A new two-year demonstration, the HyLIFT-DEMO (Clean Efficient Power for Materials Handling) project, will deploy at least 30 fuel cell-powered forklifts and hydrogen refueling at three end-user sites throughout Europe. The project is co-funded by the European Joint Undertaking for Fuel Cells and Hydrogen.

Now that major companies are not only coming back to purchase more fuel cells for their materials handling fleet, and doing so from their own pocket, without government funding, we are starting to see a real tide turn for the fuel cell industry. Hopefully other warehouse and distribution facilities will take a look at this technology that their competitors are using to reduce costs and emissions while increasing productivity and join the wave.

About the Author:


Jennifer Gangi works for the Breakthrough Technologies Institute (BTI) as Program Director of Fuel Cells 2000. During Jennifer's tenure, Fuel Cells 2000 has developed an international reputation as the leading non-aligned source of fuel cell information, and has won numerous awards.

Among her many duties, Jennifer maintains www.fuelcells.org as well as the sites' two databases and chart collection, edits the monthly Fuel Cell Technology Update (circ. 12,000) and is principal author of many Fuel Cells 2000's most popular reports and analyses, including the State of the States: Fuel Cells in America and The Business Case for Fuel Cells: Why Top Companies are Purchasing Fuel Cells Today. Jennifer also writes and places articles in trade publications, does extensive media outreach and gives presentations to various organizations and audiences. Prior to joining Fuel Cells 2000 in 1999, Jennifer worked for a public relations firm in North Carolina, handling only high-technology clients.

Jennifer is active in the Sustainable Energy Coalition and the Women's Council on Energy and the Environment. She is also co-founder of the Women in Fuel Cells group and a board member of the Fuel Cell and Hydrogen Energy Association.