Fleet electrification projects have begun across North America, with many fleet operators moving to recognize the significant environmental and economic benefits of the transition to a more sustainable method of transportation; however, questions remain about how to go about this process in an effective manner, one that guarantees a smooth transition and a proper return on investment. And while some uncertainy surrounds this topic, electric vehicle (EV) charging industry leaders are stepping forward to answer these questions and guide fleet operators through their electrification programs and procurement processes.
On-Site Charging Infrastructure Provides a Tangible Asset
There are many differences in the refueling methodology of EVs when compared to an internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicle. With an EV, both in consumer and commercial use cases, the majority of the charging happens on-site and at night. This is excellent for fleet applications, which often see vehicles returning to a base of operations for refuelling and any requisite maintenance.
“Electrifying a fleet has considerable advantages, not the least of which is the fact that you are investing in on-site refuelling infrastructure that is now a tangible asset for your organization,” says Abel Zacharie, Product Line Manager for Fleet Solutions at FLO®, a North American leader in smart charging solutions. “That charger can be leveraged in a way that could provide auxillary revenue streams both now and in the future, when vehicle-to-grid technologies become more commonplace in the EV charging sphere. Similarly, there are many advantages of having your refuelling stations on-site, including lower overall costs alongside increased convenience and security. Fleet electrification, while decreasing fuel and maintenance costs, can bring these additional advantages to your fleet operation strategy.”
While there may be rare instances where it would be necessary to rely on public charging stations, most charging infrastructure providers like FLO will be able to develop a fleet charging solution that ensures all fleet vehicles can recharge over the course of an evening, rendering them ready for deployment in the morning. Further, beyond investing in their own on-site assets, there are increasingly stringent government regulations surrounding greenhouse gas emissions and increasingly favorable economic conditions surrounding electric vehicles (such as larger batteries, smarter charging stations and favorable government incentives) that have led many fleet operators to begin the transition to electric, with industry leaders like FLO helping them along the way.
Power Management Solutions Optimized for Fleets
With fleet electrification underway across North America, questions about the most cost-effective way to deploy and manage a charging solution are becoming more and more common. Perhaps most common are questions surrounding power management technologies, which allow a fleet operator to develop fixed, schedule based or systems-based charging solutions based on their fleet’s needs. Power management technologies are often considered necessary for fleet applications, where they will assist in ensuring that many vehicles are able to share available power when necessary, and that the fleet operation is able to avoid expensive peak demand charges during time periods identified by utilities as more taxing on the electrical grid.
“Power management technologies come in many forms, and most all of them will be of great benefit to an electric fleet,” says Zacharie. “A power sharing technology will reduce the load on a site’s electrical system by sharing the available capacity between units, allowing a fleet operator to install up to four times as many chargers as they might otherwise be able to. Similarly, a power limiting technology will allow a fleet operator to ensure that they do not run up a sizeable utility bill by letting them schedule power limitations to avoid peak demand charges. Our data shows you can save as much as 45% on your energy costs when deploying FLO’s power management technologies, which is why we advise our fleet clients to consider them when they electrify.”
The deployment of power management technologies is an exercise in both scalability and value creation for those fleet operators currently making the transition to electric, and their presence is especially noted in total cost of ownership models, where they significantly reduce the overall cost of electifying a fleet operation.
Value and Reliability Go Hand in Hand
Installing and managing a fleet charging solution is an effective way to drive value through the transition to electric; however, as with any situation where infrastructure is being deployed, it can only provide value if it is operational and available when the vehicles of a fleet need to be charged. Fleet operation is mission critical, and the status of the EV charging solution is as well; therefore, a fleet electrification pilot program should include a thorough procurement process that focuses on robust hardware, smart charging stations with advanced network and software functionality, along with an analytics and insights platform that will help ensure that the data generated from fleet operations is archived and available for further analysis. This last component is of particular interest to fleets operated by cities, as the mining of this data may prove invaluable for optimizing fleet operations in a standalone capacity, and for integrating into other large-scale smart city initiatives such as lowering overall greenhouse gas emissions and expanding electric mobility within urban centers.
“If you aren’t measuring it, you aren’t moving it forward,” says Jose Hollanda, Director of Marketing Programs at FLO, who advocates for fleet owners to consider the company’s new analytics and insights platform SmartVIEW. “It’s important to understand key metrics for a fleet electrification project, metrics such as energy transferred, emissions reduced and station uptime, so fleet operators can continuously optimize the charging behaviour for their fleet. Measuring these performance indicators via an analytics platform will assist greatly in being able to properly evaluate the effectiveness of a fleet electrification project, and to integrate that project into an overaching smart city strategy.”