Anyone with any experience of supplying large (1000 to 2500kVA) container cranes from diesel generators? Particulary interested in rejeneration effects.
The reason is that a diesel machine cannot receive much power during regeneration and that will be catastophic when lowering containers.
A braking resistor is OK in applications where lowering a heavy object is done occasionally. But a container crane shall do it continously. And that will require a heavy resistor and it will produce a lot of heat.
A container crane usually has a motor between 250 kW up to 800 kW (not counting boom, gantry, trolley etcetera - just hoisting motor). There are the newer (Chinese) cranes with dual hoisting motors that, if I remember right, have two motors around 600 kW.
The problem is the same with a hydraulic drive. The diesel cannot receive the energy and you need to use hydraulic means to absorb it. With large coolers.
But, if this is a temporary need and if you can tolerate slower goods handling and a large braking resistor and a rather high energy bill then, of course, it can be done. It is done in mobile cranes, and they are used to handle containers in some harbours.
