Speaker
Description
Electrification is emerging as a key technological pathway for future forest harvesting systems to address existing challenges. These include reducing greenhouse gas emissions, improving energy efficiency, and strengthening the resilience of the forest sector to external disruptions, as it is currently heavily dependent on fossil fuels for harvesting and in-forest operations. Major manufacturers such as Komatsu Forest and Ponsse have recently introduced hybrid drivetrains in concept and prototype machines, paving the way also for a transition towards fully electric machines. However, battery-electric solutions in forestry face substantially different operational demands compared with on-road vehicles. Harvester and forwarder duty cycles are characterised by short, repetitive high-power peaks, complex crane operations and highly dynamic load profiles. At the same time, machines in northern regions routinely operate at temperatures down to –25 °C or colder. Such conditions strongly influence battery power output, usable capacity, charging behaviour and long-term degradation. While most battery research is conducted under standard laboratory conditions or according to automotive driving cycles, dedicated studies for forestry applications under cold-climate conditions are essentially non-existent. This represents a critical knowledge gap for harvesting system design, system selection and reliable winter operation planning and therefore a boundary for a future implementation of electric forestry machinery.
To address this gap, we are establishing a commercial-scale battery testing laboratory at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU), Department of Forest Bioeconomy and Technology in Umeå. The facility will enable controlled performance and aging tests of state-of-the-art lithium-ion and sodium-ion cells under forestry-specific duty cycles and temperatures ranging from –40 °C to +40 °C. Test protocols will be co-developed with machine manufacturers and forest companies to accurately replicate real harvesting and forwarding work cycles, ensuring relevance for mechanized cut-to-length systems operating in boreal climate conditions. Two main experimental blocks are planned: (i) characterisation and performance tests, including pulse-power and representative load-cycle experiments at varying temperatures, and (ii) long-term degradation studies at sub-zero and reference temperatures to quantify capacity fade, power loss and safety-relevant phenomena under realistic use. By generating high-quality, application-specific data, the laboratory will support improved battery integration into harvesting systems, inform cold-mitigation and charging strategies, provide inventory data to support upscaling in environmental and economic analyses (e.g., LCA/LCC) and enable more reliable uptime and lifecycle predictions. Beyond strengthening research infrastructure in northern Sweden, the initiative directly contributes to technological innovation in forest harvesting systems, positioning electrified drivetrains as a viable and climate-resilient solution for future forestry operations.
| Keywords | Electrification; Batteries; Cold-climate-operations; Forestry-duty-cycles |
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