'A good solution for safe and centralized charging'

The Friesian municipality of Waadhoeke has had five Seefion loading lockers for a year now. And they are excellent. 'It sometimes happened that a battery became very hot during charging.'

The municipality of Waadhoeke consists of the main town of Franeker and the former municipalities of Franekeradeel, Het Bildt, Menaldumadeel and some villages from the former municipalities of Littenseradeel. With its own field service, the municipality performs maintenance in public areas, from greenery to paving, sewer pumping stations and cemeteries. There is also its own garage for the maintenance of machinery. About seventy people work daily in the field service with such equipment as chainsaws, brush cutters and leaf blowers, as well as drills. Field service manager Jan van der Tol: "We now do a lot of our work with battery-powered machines. We have about eighty batteries in use. At one point there were battery chargers at every one of our six locations. It also sometimes happened that a battery became very hot during charging. That's when we started looking at solutions for safe and centralized charging."

Van der Tol ended up with his regular machine supplier Jetze Gros of DEM B.V. in Leeuwarden. He had a loading vault from Seefion in his showroom. After a presentation of the safe by Seefion, Van der Tol was convinced. "It seemed like a good solution to us and they had a good story about how the safe was developed. There are also a lot of options and they meet all the conditions set by an insurer."

An inventory was then made of what the Waadhoeke municipality needed in terms of capacity. Three large and two smaller vaults were chosen, based on the number of machines per team. Because the cost fell below a certain threshold, there was no need for a tender. After ordering, the safes were delivered within a few weeks. 

The manager is very pleased with the loading lockers. "It works out well! For the guys, central charging took some getting used to at first. Previously we also had cars with an inverter in them to charge the batteries, but we moved away from that. Everyone gets the necessary batteries and a box that fits six batteries. Every night the batteries go into the charging locker. Especially at night, we make sure that it is securely locked. This is also thought of, by the way: if you hold the door open too long, an alarm goes off."

In terms of preparation, switching to loading vaults was not that complicated. Only some additional cabling was installed to power the lockers. "In the future we will move or remodel our housing. But I wasn't worried about this investment because these safes can just go with us to another building. All in all, this is a nice solution for us that we are very satisfied with. And should there be a change in legislation, Seefion safes can be easily adapted because they are modular."