Equipmake, Perkins and Loughborough University have moved Project Coeus from development testing into a complete off-highway machine, installing their fuel-configurable hybrid industrial open power unit in a Terex Ecotec TDS 820 shredder. The three-year programme is led by Perkins and supported by £11.14m of UK Government funding through the Advanced Propulsion Centre UK, including £3.24m awarded to Equipmake, with the current phase intended to establish whether the engine, electric machine and power electronics can behave as one usable power unit under real machine loads.
The architecture combines a configurable spark-ignited Perkins engine with Equipmake’s heavy-duty electric motor and silicon carbide inverter, creating a system that can be adapted for hydrogen, ethanol, methanol or biomethane. Fuel flexibility is therefore being approached through a common powertrain architecture rather than four interchangeable fuels: storage, combustion characteristics, infrastructure and operating requirements differ materially between them, so each installation still requires an engineered configuration even where the underlying engine platform is shared.
Moving into the Terex shredder changes the test environment considerably. A laboratory can impose repeatable torque and speed conditions, whereas a waste-processing machine experiences abrupt changes as material reaches the cutting system, clears, jams or varies in density. The powertrain has to respond quickly enough to those transient loads without destabilising the hydraulic and mechanical systems around it, which is why Perkins has identified peak-load capability and transient response among the measurements for the machine phase.
Electrical assistance gives the system another source of torque when demand changes quickly. Equipmake’s motor-generator and inverter can contribute power alongside the combustion engine, but the useful measure is not simply the peak output available from each component; controls have to determine when electrical assistance is required, how that contribution affects engine operation and whether the combined response remains predictable over repeated duty cycles. Poor coordination would merely exchange one constraint for another, particularly on equipment expected to work continuously under variable loads.
Packaging creates a parallel engineering challenge because Project Coeus is intended to fit within the space occupied by a conventional industrial power unit. Hybridisation adds an electric machine, inverter, cabling and associated thermal requirements, all of which have to coexist with the engine and the host machine’s existing cooling, mounting and service arrangements. A system described as a direct replacement is commercially more useful when it avoids a wholesale machine redesign, but that advantage only survives if the electrical hardware can be accommodated without making installation or maintenance impractical.
The project reflects the uneven way electrification is likely to reach off-highway machinery. Equipment that operates predictable shifts near fixed charging infrastructure can suit battery electric power, while remote machines, long duty cycles and high continuous loads can make full battery replacement more difficult. Coeus instead combines electrification with a combustion engine capable of using several lower-carbon fuels, allowing the partners to test whether hybrid power can reduce dependence on conventional diesel without assuming that every site has the same energy infrastructure.
Perkins’ Customer Machine Engineering Team is carrying out the integration work at its Peterborough research and development facility, after which the demonstrator is due to move to the company’s proving site. That sequence allows basic installation issues to be resolved before the machine is subjected to a more representative operating programme, where repeated loading, vibration, heat rejection and control interaction can expose problems that are less obvious during component testing.
Machine testing should also show whether the proposed replacement architecture transfers cleanly into an existing piece of equipment. Off-highway manufacturers sell comparatively modest production volumes across many machine types, making a bespoke low-carbon powertrain for every platform difficult to justify. If one configurable unit can be adapted across several applications without repeatedly changing the host-machine architecture, the development burden becomes easier to spread, although the current Terex installation still represents one demonstrator rather than evidence of broad compatibility.
The fuel choice will remain a separate commercial question even if the mechanical and electrical package performs as intended. Hydrogen, biomethane, ethanol and methanol are not equally available in every market, and their storage systems, safety requirements and supply costs will influence which configuration makes sense for a particular machine. Project Coeus can demonstrate that the engine platform is capable of supporting those routes; it cannot create the fuelling infrastructure needed to operate them.
The next proving phase therefore has a more demanding task than showing that the shredder moves and cuts material. Perkins, Equipmake and Loughborough have to establish whether the hybrid system can sustain the TDS 820’s load profile, manage transient demand and fit within the practical constraints of an industrial machine, because those results will determine whether the programme remains an interesting powertrain demonstrator or becomes an architecture equipment manufacturers can use.
