Robert Koelsch, CEO of AEM.green and Co-Inventor of the SolarTechTRU is Showcased On Stage at ACTexpo. Zero Cost Zero Emissions.

The Golden Nugget of the Advanced Clean Transportation Expo (ACTexpo) 2025 Features Advanced Energy Machines' SolarTechTRU Technology as the Golden Nugget

How Reefer Fleets are Reducing Carbon, Achieving Zero Emissions, Most Significantly, at Zero Cost.

Introduction to Zero Emission Food Delivery. It is time to plug in.

We've been delivering food 24 hours a day, seven days a week with lithium batteries since 2012. We spent a lot of time trying to eliminate this black carbon problem that is at the hotels you stay at, where food gets delivered at the restaurants, at the grocery stores, residential areas. The noise problem goes away with electrics.

  📍 📍 So we've seen the advantages of what we've accomplished over the years.

The Golden Nugget of ACTexpo

We like to look at it as the golden nugget of ACTexpo. What we're really trying to accomplish here at this show is for you to go zero emissions without any costs. In other words, zero costs to remove a ton of carbon, and that's what we're all talking about.  📍

What is the cost to our fleets? Because we can't have food prices go up because of zero emission technology delivering food.

Designing Efficient Reefer Systems

So   📍 when we designed our system, we designed it specifically for 28 foot to 53 foot trailers, multi temp and single temp. And by doing that over the last 13 years, we were like Tom Hanks trying to come back from  the moon.

Every watt counted every way that you loaded the system, counted every thing that you could do to try to reduce the inrush . A reefer system turning on and off was accomplished to the point now to where for a storage facility or anybody running these things on electric, they can do it with a 10 to 15 amp draw on a 480 volt circuit.

So that's tremendous because that means you can deploy 50 to 100 of these without anything coming off the street for power. So we're very low impact on the grid. We accomplished that in a number of ways.

Innovative Power Solutions

  📍 One of the ways is by deploying solar panels on the roof of the trailer. Another way, if you look in front of the rear axles, is a wheel generator.

We call that a momentum generator. So in the state of California, that's only recaptured when you go outside the state of California, you can turn it on all the  time and accomplish about a 98% reduction in your diesel. And so the whole idea here was to come up with something that had good communications. As you see on the slide there, we report literally every 60 seconds.

So the condition of the system is always known, and the technology exists. It's viable,  

📍 it's there. It's very powerful. Zero emission strategy.

Safety and Low Voltage Systems

It's very safe. It's a 46 volt, low voltage system. So all the  solar panels on the roof are low voltage, the wheel generator's putting out low voltage. So there's never any risk to a human being ever having a heart stop because of a frequency or an arc flash or any number of problems with what high voltage systems offer.

We built our first system, high voltage in 2009, actually, and that's when we decided to move over to the forklift strategy of running low voltage. So really get down for the fleets. How do the numbers work? Because nothing is gonna get deployed unless the numbers work.

Economic Benefits and CORE Program-Substantial Vouchers Available

We've been fortunate enough to benefit  from the CORE program.

We've done over 400 vouchers on the core program and we've been able to get good footprints and   get what we call a beachhead strategy at big corporations that are using these systems every day to see if they can really integrate them and replace diesel for emission purposes. And this is what we're all fighting.

Health Impacts of Black Carbon

When you look at the studies,  especially the studies that CARB did the emissions are pretty scary. And these sub half micron particles, black carbon particles come into our bodies and they don't leave. They come into your brains. They come into your hearts. They make your heart this far because the black carbon creates tracks in our body.

 And it creates tracks that electric signals in your brain misfires. And so the studies are all pretty valid now coming in. People like Loma Linda University did these studies on 10,000  people. So this is a serious problem. It shouldn't have to be regulated.

Proven Zero Emission Viability & Ongoing WAIRE Incentives Per SolarTechTRU

Now is the time, without regulations, to prove to the world that this industry can deliver food on time at the right temperature without black carbon emissions.

 Each one of these TRUs can reduce up to 27 tons of carbon a year. 📍 That's a big number. It's as big a number as the trucks are. Yet, we use about one seventh of the power of a truck. So the efficiency in your power grid compared to how much carbon you're reducing is tremendous, and we're very proud of the fact that we've reduced 17,000 tons of carbon so far on our efforts.

We've got one site that we're working on out in the East coast to where they're putting out 35,000 tons of carbon a year across the city and across the populace. So it's here we can accomplish this now and get this reduced and eliminated. In this Los Angeles area here, AQMD has a program called a WAIRE program.

A lot of these fleets pay very high fees for diesels coming and going to their locations, and our system offsets $20,000 per TRU, or more per year against those fees that are being charged. So the system when you blend that in, really pays for itself over and above some of the numbers. I'm gonna show you here in a minute.

The Numbers Work: Leasing, State Vouchers, Credits, Low Voltage DC

We sit down with our customers and we say, all right, what is this really gonna cost you? Our goal to sit down with the customer, the "golden nugget" that we're talking about, is to get that ton of carbon reduced for free. We work through their numbers, how many hours a year they typically run, what they're paying for fuel, what their maintenance is.

It's not free to pump that diesel into your rig every day. So you gotta include that number into these calculations. We like to come up with, especially using the state vouchers, 30% to 50% reduction in cost. So it's not only free to reduce the carbon, you're saving money. And that's the new green that the world is talking about right now.

So we wanna be both green in emissions and green in your operational costs. As I said, it's a low voltage DC system. It only pulls 10 to 15 amps, on a 480 volt circuit, we convert that 480 volts at a charger, usually up on a wall, at the dock door, out in a parking lot, to 46 volts, and then we send it out.

What we found over the years was the number one problem with these systems was a human being, not plugging 'em in, or not wanting to  plug them in .

Automated Charging Solutions, Telematics & All Low Voltage DC

So, we came up with automated charging. Which we've had deployed now for three years, and we lose less than half a percent of the energy across these conductive pads.

So we've taken the human element of it, we've gotten rid of cords, and it's all automated and the charging is automated. As a matter of fact. As I said earlier, we've got, tremendous telematics that really give us the condition of the system on an operational day. And of course, let's face it, the end of the day,  the job is delivered at the right temperature without any black carbon.

Exploring Hydrogen and Solar Options - Zero Range Anxiety

We're looking at the hydrogen options right now that are very exciting, that are beginning to get to the point to where we think they can pencil in the next few months, maybe the next couple years, as range extenders. The biggest problem you got with battery electrics is you get to the end of the route and somebody hasn't plugged it in, or somebody ran it at the distribution center for four hours, not plugged in.

If we've got a backup hybrid that's hydrogen, we're still zero emission.  📍 We do solar grids, so we can even combine the solar and the hydrogen in a solar grid for people. We're a one stop shop. We do the infrastructure as well, so one phone call to us and we're the solution set for the customer.

And we're playing with things like the thermal battery to where you put phase change material inside the trailer to maintain the temperature, to reduce the number of BTU and the power when you're away from the distribution center. So we've got a total solution with stability and efficiency.  We've got over 12 million miles on the road, over probably closer to 2 million deliveries at this point.

And we work elbow to elbow with the customer in the yard, listening, innovating, reacting quickly, and giving 'em the best bang for the buck that they can get.  📍 It's over a hundred thousand of these things in California running every day , so it's a big deal. There's probably nearly 900,000 'em operating in North America.

Partnerships and Future Outlook-Annual CARB Voucher Deadline

It's time for powerful partnerships and we're developing those  and, we are there to support our customers 100%,  24 hours a day. And it's made in America, and it's designed to really take away any dangers to workers, designed to be easily implemented, so that it can be integrated in the diesel without too much effort. 

I got a lot of patents that protect the technology. Of course, we qualify with CARB as zero emissions here in the state, and there's solar tax credits with the solar on the roof, that we can equate in the the leases that help reduce costs further, and that's what this is all about, reducing pollution and reducing costs.

Some of our largest food distributors in the country are our main partners, PFG. We applaud them. They have been a phenomenal company for moving forward to reduce carbon in their corporation, as well as UNFI. They deliver a lot of the whole Foods, phenomenal companies, US Foods, Albertsons. We applaud them all.

They've worked with us through the years and it hasn't always been pretty. Sometimes you've got issues that you've gotta work through, but we've been there working together and we're all proliferating together.

📍 So we're very excited about this future, and here's the code. You can check us out, go to our website.

There's a lot of information there and we've spent a lot of time on it. I appreciate you all being here and listening to us today.   📍 Thank you.

Thank you, Robert.

www.AEM.Green

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