First look: World’s first electric drilling rig on site

The world’s first electric drilling rig, engineered and manufactured by German firm Liebherr, has completed its first ever job on a customer site.

The rig, designed to be 100% electric and produce zero emissions on site, has been operating on one of the largest roadwork sites in western Austria.

i+R, an Austrian contractor, has been conducting deep drilling foundations for the project using the LB 16.

The drilling rig has not been the only electric machine on the site, however; in some cases the concrete was delivered by a Liebherr concrete mixer ETM 905, which operates with an electric drum drive.

In normal operation the mixer’s battery capacity is said to be sufficient for the entire working day. As a plug-in hybrid the battery can be charged during the journey or, for instance, at a concrete mixing plant.

i+R also had the use of an electric compact excavator and when all machines were present at once, for the first time ever, deep foundation work on a construction site was carried out using almost exclusively electrically driven machines.

To complete the project, i+R is installing 148 piles and drilling 1,742m into the ground and approximately 1,200m³ of concrete will be poured. The piles vary between 10m and 14m in depth and have a diameter of 900mm.

The machine achieved approximately two piles per day. As a result of restricted working height, casing pipes with a shorter length (2m) had to be used with the reinforcement cages inserted in sections.

On a job site such as this, it is estimated that, over one year, approximately 35,000 litres of diesel can be saved and more than 92 tonnes of CO₂ emissions can be avoided.