Goods movement and port related activities are a significant source of emissions in many large urban areas. Electrification of diesel cargo handling equipment is one method of reducing community exposure to these emissions, that also provides the potential for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. This study evaluated the performance of several pieces of zero emission cargo transfer equipment for a demonstration conducted at two terminal locations at the Port of Long Beach (POLB). This included the data logging of three battery-electric top handlers and one battery-electric yard tractor, as well as two baseline diesel top handlers and one diesel yard tractor. The battery-electric equipment typically operated about 5 hours per day, while using between 34 to 50% of the battery pack state of charge (SOC). In general, the battery-electric equipment was able to provide comparable hours of operation to the diesel equipment over a typical 8-hour shift. The electrical top handlers and the electric yard tractor were equipped with 931 and 220 kWh batteries, respectively. Over the same period of operation, the battery-electric equipment provided considerable benefits in total energy consumption, using on average 66.9 and 56.9 kWh/hr for the top handlers at the main terminal location for their use. The diesel top handlers at terminal 1 averaged 204.8 and 139.1 kWh/hr. The electric yard tractor at terminal 2 on average used 15.2 kWh/hr while the diesel counterpart used 65.9 kWh/hr. The results suggest that the deployment of battery-electric equipment in port cargo handling operations could provide considerable benefits in terms of emissions reductions and energy consumption. The results also indicate that performance monitoring of the equipment as it is deployed will provide important feedback about the effectiveness of battery-electric equipment in different applications, which can be used to improve the designs of future generations of battery-electric equipment.
