10 reasons why going electric is good for business

Sustainability is not a trend: it is a driver. All industries play an important role in cutting carbon emissions, and in becoming environmentally and socially responsible. Switching to zero emission electric compressors will help businesses achieve their sustainability goals by transitioning away from fossil-fuel dependency, and commit to a cleaner, greener future.

Sustainability is more than just cutting CO2 output. Cities want to ban pollution – but noise is also a pollutant. Here, even the latest diesel engines are noisy, whereas electric compressors are extremely quiet – the same level as a conversation. They will remove noise distraction, enhancing both productivity and noise safety.

The combination of zero emissions and almost zero noise means compressors can work indoors, and the lack of moving parts (and their insulation from the elements) compared to an ICE compressor means they can work in extreme conditions of temperature and dust with total protection from the elements.

Carbon reductions will become a more important differentiator as more and more companies publicly commit to more ambitious targets, and the industry is now waking up to the fact that compressors are perfect to go electric. It is likely that ambitions to go green will accelerate rather than slow down – not just out of necessity, but because the people demand it..

At Atlas Copco, we have a saying that ‘there is always a better way’. An example of this is our latest Stage V-compliant diesel portable compressors, which perform far better and are far cleaner than those of even just a decade ago. Add in biofuels such as HVO and their CO2 emissions shrink by over 90% – to almost nothing. Turning to an electric compressor is merely a natural evolution in aiming for ‘always better’, and staying ahead of the competitive curve by driving innovation..

Electric compressors have far fewer parts than their diesel alternative, period. This means less to go wrong and maintain. So much so that service intervals are four times longer for diesel compressors– from 500 hours - compared to 2,000 for the E-Air range.

The lack of a relatively heavy combustion engine or a heavy battery pack offers several convenience advantages. Plug-in electric compressors are far lighter and have a 40% smaller footprint than their equivalents, making them easier to tow and manhandle. Atlas Copco’s E-Air range is also equipped with PACE (Pressure Adjusted through Cognitive Electronics) technology, an electronic pressure regulation system which locks in the perfect combination for the simplest usage.

Our electric motors work at more than 90% efficiency, leaving diesel engines’ 35% efficiency in the dust. For sites that use gensets, they are often working at very low levels of capacity- inefficiently low in fact. Connecting our electric compressors often improves the emission performance of gensets, and will also assist European businesses in the industrial sector to achieve the EU’s energy efficiency standards.

Over the course of their lives,the total cost of ownership for an electric compressor is cut considerably in comparison to diesel-run variations. Atlas Copco’s E-Air H185 compressor working at 75% load will, for example, cost €20,000 less to run over the course of its life than a comparable ICE powered unit – cutting 41,400 kg of CO2 in the process.