When an electric excavator turned out to be unavailable, Staad built one himself

A nice challenge

'A nice challenge', general manager Pieter Staadegaard thought. So they immediately called Develon, the South Korean company of which Staadegaard is the importer. But replacing a heavy diesel engine in an excavator with an electric one was impossible according to Develon. 'So we decided to do it ourselves', Staadegaard says with a big smile. 'Within a year we had converted a diesel excavator.'

Big question

Then things started to go fast. Because partly due to the nitrogen crisis there is a great demand for machines without combustion engines. Staad, which started in 2013 with 14 employees, now has 148 people on the payroll. Approximately 80 percent of the turnover comes from the sale and rental of electrical equipment.

This growth should continue steadily in the coming years thanks to the pride that has been on the doorstep for a few weeks: the Staad 17 W. An electric excavator designed and developed entirely by itself, including a battery manufactured on its own patent. With this, the company wants to conquer the European market in the coming years.

The seed for this success was already planted in a sense when Staadegaard's grandfather remigrated from the United States to the Netherlands in 1920. Thanks to the experiences his family had gained with agricultural machinery in the state of Minnesota, he managed to cultivate the relatively poor soil in Brabant. Other farmers came to see how it worked. In 1930, grandfather Staadegaard handed over the farm to his brothers and decided to fully devote himself to the sale and service of tractors and other agricultural machinery.

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From horse to tractor

'My family still tells wonderful stories from that time', says Pieter Staadegaard. 'Most customers exchanged their horses for such a tractor and that took some getting used to. Once a farmer came back with the message that something was wrong because the machine did not respond at all when he shouted 'huu'.'

Staadegaard's father had to cycle to customers when he was 6 years old to explain how to safely start their machines. Since the 1960s, the Staadegaards have also sold excavators. Pieter and his brothers made that department independent in 2013. The rest of the family business was sold in 2020.

Just as his grandfather pioneered mechanization, Pieter Staadegaard and his brother Sijmen (director sustainability) are leading the way in today's revolution: electrification. They employ a research team of forty people for this. The 17W is their latest showpiece.

Innovation

Compared to the earlier converted diesel excavators, the most important innovation of the 17W is that it drives electrically, says technical specialist machines Luuc Duijm. 'Classic excavators drive on hydraulics and research we did showed that this consumes by far the most energy. Driving with an electric motor results in a saving of around 20 percent.'

'For our first excavators, we designed a 400-kilowatt-hour battery ourselves,' says Theo Jansen, technical specialist in batteries. 400 kilowatt-hours is about the same as eight hundred average bicycle batteries. 'That would allow you to run an excavator for ten hours, more than enough for an eight-hour shift. Because the 17W is much more efficient, we have now built a 300-kilowatt-hour battery variant for it.'

Recover energy

There are also opportunities for improvement in the future. Batteries are getting better and better and excavators can also be more efficient. Duijm: 'We can also do the movements of the excavator arm with electric motors instead of hydraulics, then we can also recover energy when the arm drops. And with AI we can hopefully control movements in such a way that they use as little energy as possible.'

Now the costs of an electric excavator are still about 30 percent higher than the diesel engine variant, but according to the technicians that will quickly turn in favor of electric. In the meantime, Duijm is already working on the next electric excavator from its own product line: 'Another size bigger and then not with tires, but with tracks.'

The latest development for Staad is: energy as a service. Staadegaard: 'Especially for customers who work in different places, charging is stressful. We take that away for them. We have two electric trucks with which we provide customers with full batteries in the workshop.'

Reasonable price

Staad has built up a network of companies in recent years that have solar panels, wind turbines and digesters spread across the country. Staadegaard: 'They can put their batteries there and charge them for a very reasonable price. Preferably at times of the day when the supply of electricity is so great that solar panels are increasingly switched off and wind turbines are shut down.'

They are also working on plans to use the batteries for many more applications. Staadegaard: 'An excavator is at work for about two hundred days a year. The batteries can of course also be used for the other 165 days. For example, to charge cars or to supply a festival with power. But they can also be placed next to a solar park and store power when the sun is shining and supply it to the grid when it gets dark.'

It's all very promising, says Pieter Staadegaard. 'There are a hundred thousand earthmoving machines in the Netherlands alone. If they are all supplied with green energy in this way, we will take a big step in the energy transition.'

The company - Article by de Volkskrant

The Company
In this weekly column, entrepreneurs talk about their company. Today: Staad from Veghel, founded in 2013, with 148 employees and a turnover of 75 million euros in 2024.

Interview De Volkskrant - The company - Original article: click here.
Author: Tjerk gualtherie van Weezel
Photos by: Photo Raymond Rutting / de Volkskrant