Electrification in Fluid Power Task Force Still Accepting Volunteers

Electrification is a buzzword throughout most industries now and is a common topic being discussed at conferences, events, and board rooms. While many businesses and industries have already embraced electrification, others are still working to understand the impacts, opportunities, and decision points to make. To add further confusion, electrification means many different things and is a broad term encompassing all types of ideas, products, movements, efforts, and industries. This confusion hinders the ability of an industry or company to digest and fully understand what is going on and how to react within the context of their business strategy.

As part of our mission to strengthen the fluid power industry, and as a key initiative within our objective of providing effective fluid power forums where NFPA members, OEMs, and related technology partners can connect and advance our collective interests, we are launching an Electrification in Fluid Power Task Force that will work to achieve the following objectives:

• Explore myths, trends, and buzzwords that have arisen in the space and that have caused confusion.
• Define electrification within the fluid power industry.
• Outline the electrification architectures (e.g., hybrid, bev, zev, hev, phev) that are commonly applied in the mobile and industrial markets served by fluid power.
• Define and compare important metrics related to the use of electro-mechanical, electro-hydraulic, and electro-pneumatic solutions in these architectures in order to provide guidance on potential applications and technology break points.
• Describe potential changes in market size among mobile and industrial markets served by fluid power as a result of the likely pace of electrified system adoption.
• Describe the product categories within fluid power that are most likely to be affected by those market changes.
• Explore strategies for effectively marketing fluid power solutions in this evolving space.

Our primary deliverable will be a report that documents our findings and recommendations. The report will be shared widely among NFPA members and other channel stakeholders, and will be used to help inform the next NFPA technology roadmapping process, scheduled to begin in 2023.

The task force is chaired by Mike Terzo, of Terzo Power Systems, with NFPA President/CEO Eric Lanke serving as facilitator. The first session launched last week at the September 1, 2022, NFPA Quarterly Conference, a session co-sponsored with the Association of Equipment Manufacturers and themed around “Increasing Efficiency and Reducing Emissions with Electric-Powered Hydraulics on Mobile Machines.” The task force will meet as needed to discuss and complete its work, with the goal of presenting its final report at the March 2023 IFPE trade show in Las Vegas.

All NFPA members with interest are welcome to serve on the task force. Please send your request for participation to Eric Lanke at elanke@nfpa.com