Keith Marett, CEO Portable Electric, about the new PU130 mobile charging unit

In an exclusive interview with LECTURA Press, Keith Marett, CEO of Portable Electric, delves into the innovative strides his company is making in mobile battery storage technology. 

Partnering with Volvo Construction Group, Portable Electric has launched the PU130, a groundbreaking mobile charging unit designed to power compact construction equipment quickly and efficiently. 

Keith Marett shares insights on the product's unique features, the company's expansion plans, and their vision for a more electrified and sustainable future in the mobile heavy machinery industry.

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Transcript

Patrik Eder: Hello, everyone. My name is Patrik Eder from LECTURA Press, and I'm here with Keith Marett, the CEO of Portable Electric. Hello, Keith, and thank you for joining us.

Keith Marett: Hello, Patrik. Thank you for having me.

PE: Keith, can you briefly introduce yourself and your company?

KM: Sure. So, I’m Keith Merritt, I’m the CEO of Portable Electric. We are Vancouver-based technology company that manufactures portable and mobile battery energy storage systems (BESS) and e-Chargers. We provide both portable units of five kilowatts as well as our larger mobile units up to 40 kilowatts. 

PE: You said that you are based in Canada. Is that the only place when you have your office or do you have any other?

KM: We have a satellite office in California, but we're headquartered here in Vancouver.

PE: Portable Electric has recently introduced the PU130 mobile charging unit in collaboration with Volvo. What are the main highlights?

KM: We're really excited about this partnership with Volvo Construction North America Group. This has been a couple of years in the making, and we've been working with Volvo to really bring this product to market. At its core, it's a battery electric storage system providing AC power for tooling applications. But unique to it is that we've also embedded the ability to have a low-voltage DC fast charger for Volvo Construction equipment.

PE: What types of construction machines can be recharged by the PU130 and how many of them at the same time?

KM: So right now, it's focused on what we call the compact equipment market. So that's usually anything that's about a three, three and a half ton or less, both on the excavators, loaders, road paver rollers that they have. And what we can do with that is it's currently, as it's configured right now, it's a single unit at a time charging system. It provides up to 20 kilowatts of fast charging ability. And really, what that means is that it can charge up one of those pieces of electrified equipment within about a half-hour to a 45-minute window.

PE: That's really cool. And one of the buzzwords in the mobile heavy machinery industry is currently digitalisation. So what remote monitoring solutions have you integrated and what kind of data does it collect?

KM: Yeah, good question. So that's been a big focus for us. So at our core, we have what we call power AI technology. So that's our embedded intelligence within the unit. Part of that is gathering all of the data in the telemetry. So we gather over 200 points of data from our unit every second and that allows us to have a very real-time view of both what our equipment is doing, but also because we connect to Volvo equipment, we can also understand what that Volvo equipment has in terms of what its state of charge is, what its positional is. And so a remote operator, anywhere in the world can get access to the data and, one, because it's got embedded GPS and it can see where those assets are, but two, we could immediately proactively know if there's going to be any issues or any faults that have been identified and then ideally be able to fix those in a remote environment. And then the other thing, it provides a kind of a 360 view of that electrified job site.

PE: Is the unit available globally or exclusively for the US market?

KM: Currently, the plan is to have it available for North American market to start with and roll that out. And as we get rolling that out through the end of the year in 2025, we'll look to create a global version based on it.

PE: I can imagine that a lot of people would like to see the unit live, so at what trade fairs and industry events will be the opportunity to see the product?

KM: Yeah, really we're working in conjunction with Volvo on that right now and get making sure that they have access to the demo units. I don't have a list in front of me right now. I do know we've been involved in what they call the Volvo Days where Volvo hosts key customers to come visit their sites and have ability to tour all of their latest greatest products including the PU130.

PE: Can you briefly elaborate on what other sustainable solutions by portable electric can we expect in the future?

KM: Yeah, we're focused heavily on that mobile best market - the battery energy storage system market. We've been doing it for the past 10 years and really establish ourselves as the de facto brand predominantly in the film market was our early market adopters. And so we've got a lot of good customer base in there providing clean silent power. Then recently in the last couple of years because of the inflection of electrification in construction, we've now expanded that market base for us as well. We've got over 1,000 units deployed so far. We've got units mostly in North America what our footprint is, but we also do have some units in various parts of Europe, including the UK.

PE: And this will wrap up our interview. So Keith, thank you very much for your time and good luck in your future projects.

KM: Perfect, excellent. Thank you for your time as well, Patrick.