The start-up powering cranes without ‘volatile diesel’
Friday, 29 May 2026
Auckland entrepreneur Elliot Peacocke reckons he must be heading one of the few companies that’s not upset by recent fuel cost increases.
That’s because his start-up business, CranePower, sells battery-based mobile power systems for cranes that are otherwise dependent on diesel generators.
And early deployments of Peacocke’s system, which is called E-Gen, show it can cut operational fuel costs for cranes by up to 85%, a benefit for construction companies dealing with high costs.
Those savings immediately increased the profit per hour for construction firms, while reducing onsite downtime and eliminating the need for refuelling logistics, he said.
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“Fuel is one of the biggest uncontrolled costs on a construction site. It’s driven by global events, not by the operator. We’ve removed that dependency and replaced it with something more stable and efficient.
“We’re matching power supply to how sites actually operate. Once you do that, the waste disappears, along with the costs.”
Construction has run the cranes it uses on diesel generators for decades, but that was an “incredibly inefficient” system because it involved burning fuel all day to service short bursts of demand, he said.
In contrast, the system Peacocke has developed is a one-metre-cubed box that can power a crane from a small input supply. It is mobile, and has a footprint just 10% the size of a traditional, containerised system.
The E-Gen has an adaptive power platform to manage generator, mains, and stored battery energy in real time, and is engineered to detect and respond to load spikes in milliseconds.
That smoothes energy use across the day and increases profit per hour by reducing downtime caused by generator failures or fuel shortages.
The system also eliminates carbon emissions at the source, and Peacocke said that made it a powerful tool for a sector transitioning towards energy-efficient building.
He’s always been an inventor and engineer, and fascinated by energy, whether nuclear, chemical, or electrical. As a child he reengineered the family’s lawnmower to run on methanol.
Later, he built a machine that made biodiesel from waste vegetable oil sourced from local takeaway shops, and developed a way of making fuel oil from algae.
Eventually, he started a company that imported diesel generators, industrial air compressors, and solar panels. One client was RocketLab, and for them he devised a new, more efficient power system.
But it was his work with another client, Ryman Healthcare, that led to the development of CranePower and the E-Gen system.
One of the ways the retirement village operator was using generators was to power a crane on a construction site. Peacocke was remotely monitoring and logging data on the generators’ performance.
When he saw the load profile he realised running a massive diesel generator all day long to power a crane was stupid and inefficient.
“Tower cranes will sit there and do nothing for 15 minutes, then they’ll move for 30 seconds, and then go back to doing nothing. When they do move they draw a lot of power so they get these huge usage spikes, but the rest of the time it is virtually zero.”
He did some calculations, and worked out it would be possible to power a crane from a standard extension lead plugged into the wall, rather than burning thousands of litres of fuel to keep a generator running all day.
That prompted him to investigate the economics of offering an alternative.
“I discovered there are more than 100,000 tower cranes in operation globally, and that a good percentage of them use diesel generators… and I couldn’t find anyone making a product to solve that problem.”
He sold his diesel generator company in 2021, and by the end of 2022 Peacocke had developed the first edition of the battery-driven system that would become E-Gen.
It took a while to convince the construction industry to give the new technology a go but as 2024 was drawing to a close, the sales started rolling in, he said.
“People have reached a point where they’ve seen other people using batteries, they’ve learned about them, and they’re probably starting to feel regulatory pressure.
“From a commercial perspective, they can see that the savings when you don’t run a generator for 60 to 80 hours a week are huge.”
Demand for non-diesel power solutions has continued to grow, and the Middle East conflict-driven fuel shock was boosting it, he said.
“We must be one of the few companies that hasn’t been upset by fuel cost increases. In fact, we’re struggling to scale up production fast enough to meet demand, and now have a big backlog of orders.”
Cranepower is currently selling in New Zealand and Australia, but has just started the process of launching into the ESG-driven European Union, and will look at expanding into the United States next year.
Peacocke did not want to share the exact revenue of the company, but said it was currently in the tens of millions, and they were aiming to pass $100 million in the next two years as they entered the EU market.
The EU market was 10 times the size of the Australian market and with oil prices likely to remain high indefinitely that was going to drive increased demand for the company’s product over the next few years, he said.
“Our biggest challenge is scaling fast enough. Finding good quality people with relevant experience in NZ is difficult, and more broadly keeping up with the rapid pace of change and innovation.
“We are striving to always have the highest power density product on the market (most power for the smallest size).”
It had taken a significant amount of time, work and resources to get from the original idea to the momentum the company had now, he added.
“But the most surprising thing to me is that someone hasn’t already done this, because conceptually, it's a simple product. When you look at it like that, the evolution to a much more efficient system just seems inevitable.”