Who are Little Celeste & Big Karl?

February 27, 2021

Plant Hire in Stevenage, High Quality, Heavy & Small Plant for Hire, Reliable & Versatile Plant Machinery, Diggers

Vehicles that run on electricity are gaining popularity the world over, and even manufacturers of small plant machinery are coming up with exciting innovations. Major players such as JCB have developed all-electric versions of their heavy-lift cranes. Manufactured by specialists Sarens, the most recent addition can lift a maximum load of 1,650 tonnes, and is nicknamed ‘Little Celeste’. Incredibly this machine is not only powered by electricity, but it is able to regenerate its own electrical power!

Even though this model is huge, it is actually the smallest in the SGC (Sarens Giant Crane) range. They call it’s bigger brother ‘Big Karl’, which is the most powerful land-based crane in the world. It has a 5,000-tonne-capacity, and is currently working on the Hinkley Point C power station project in Somerset. The rest of this range from Sarens are all regular diesel-powered hydraulic cranes, but Little Celeste has no diesel or hydraulics. Some of the energy used for lifting, can be recovered as a load is lowered and then utilised. In this way energy consumption is reduced by 40%, an impressive and sustainable result. There are several advantages that come with these electrically powered machines.

• As with most other electric vehicles the crane is extremely quiet
• It does not produce exhaust emissions
• There is no risk of oil contamination
• Hydraulic pumps, filters and engines have low maintenance requirements

Liebherr are a German crane manufacturer, and they have developed the world’s first full-sized battery-powered crawler cranes. Although we aren’t aware of any cute nicknames for these as yet!

These German produced pieces of kit have exactly the same performance specification and load charts as the existing diesel-powered equivalents. The machines take only four hours to charge on a standard site electrical supply, a more powerful supply halves that time. For lifting projects in places like Stevenage check out Rhinos Plant Hire, whose range includes high performance cranes.

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