What would you do with an extra hour?

If you could have an extra hour each day, what would you do with it?  If you were operating a Plug Power GenDrive 3340-24H fuel cell, you would continue to work at 100% capacity, moving goods from warehouse to shipping dock, manufacturing assembly lines or retail stores globally.

A seven month long comparison of GenDrive 3340-24H fuel cells and GenDrive 3310 fuel cells showed that the newer GenDrive 3340-24Hs are providing 10 percent more runtime on each hydrogen fill than the older 3310s.  For every 10 operating hours on the older model, we now get 11 on the newer.

How did we accomplish this?

The GenDrive 3340-24H fuel cell was introduced in April 2016 and has been operating at a number of Plug Power customer locations since then.  This next generation GenDrive fuel cell system coupled the product enhancements learned from over 100 million hours of field runtime with Plug Power’s proprietary ProGen proton exchange membrane (PEM) fuel cell stack technology.  ProGen engines are proven to provide robust and cost-effective solutions with industry-leading performance and reliability.

With the addition of ProGen, this highly reliable system is engineered using fewer parts and lower parasitic loads, features a new advanced control system, improved system fuel efficiency, and incorporates Plug Power’s SiteView real-time monitoring capability.  When paired with Plug Power’s intelligent GenFuel hydrogen infrastructure products, the innovative SiteView system allows remote access to real-time performance data, resulting in improved fleet performance. This ‘Internet of Things’ capability, which connects Plug Power’s GenCare services team with product and application data, is a key enabler to continuous reliability and productivity improvements.

What does this improvement mean in terms of time savings and productivity?

When a pallet jack operator stops for a hydrogen refill, it takes up to 3 minutes including travel time.  That’s already a savings of about 33 minutes per day per truck over conventional battery charging on a 3 shift schedule.  Compared to fast charging batteries, fuel cell refills save 45 minutes per day per truck on a 3 shift schedule.   Adding more runtime to the fuel cells means an even higher increase in efficiency for added customer savings over our old metrics.

• 10% less hydrogen consumed
• 10% fewer operator stops for refills
• 9 refills now for every 10 refills on the older model product
• 272 hours of refueling time per year saved on a 3 shift facility model using 50 pallet jacks

Plug Power’s continuous innovation is making a difference for our customers every day.  Plug Power continues to change the way the world moves with productivity-enhancing power technology.

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