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Turkish Ground Services (TGS) –
the joint-venture between Turkish
Airlines and Havas – has improved the
performance, efficiency and reliability
of the electric vehicles that support
its operations at six major airports
across Turkey by installing the latest
battery systems from EnerSys. The
total solution devised and installed
by EnerSys at each airport includes
powerful batteries from its Hawker
Perfect Plus and Ironclad ranges,
advanced battery management
systems and state-of-the-art charge-
and-change facilities.
Established in 2010 the TGS joint-
venture serves over 100 airlines visiting
eight airports throughout the country.
Its operations include passenger,
apron and ramp services as well and
ground and cargo handling. These are
supported by a fleet of electric vehicles
including luggage tugs and push-
back tractors. TGS inherited facilities
for these vehicles that had evolved
piecemeal over many years. There
was little or no consistency across
of topping difficult. Poor management
meant individual units lost their
capacity very quickly from new and
were failing in little more than a year.
Overall the operation of the vehicles
was inconsistent, inefficient and prone
to disruption.
Seeking an improvement TGS turned to
EnerSys for advice and support. Using
its expertise and market knowledge
gained from similar applications around
the world EnerSys worked closely with
TGS to identify the existing issues and
future business requirement. EnerSys
proposed a total solution based around
a complete set of new batteries and
a purpose-built facility dedicated
to battery fleet maintenance and
management. The company worked
with TGS to finalise a specification and
project-manage the implementation.
Total Battery
Solution
the various parts of the operation or
at individual sites, as illustrated by
the situation at Ataturk Airport. Here
the battery charging and changing
areas were unmanaged and located
outdoors where they were exposed
to the elements with little security.
Batteries, battery trays and associated
equipment were easily damaged and
corroded. Cables were too long and
trailed on the ground where they were
run over and damaged by passing
vehicles. A crane system used to
change batteries was inadequate and
there was no backup to take over in
the event of failure.
The batteries themselves were
in a poor state. They were poorly
maintained, the automatic filling
systems were not working properly
and there was no reliable source of
distilled water which made any form
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Logistics Business Magazine | November 2015
BATTERY POWER