Managing the charging of electric vehicles on a regular, sedentary worksite
Planning a worksite takes preparation, and when you have electric vehicles in your fleet, managing routes and charging on site also requires a little preparation. Here are some good habits to adopt:
- Identify public charging facilities in the vicinity of the site or on your route;
- Carry a mobility card (charging card);
- Make sure you have 11 or 22 kW AC (alternating current) smart mobile charging cables* if you can charge on site. Using an application or management platform linked to the charging cable, you can retrieve the charging data to draw up an invoice or reimbursement;
- Purchase or hire 20kW or 50kW DC (direct current) mobile chargers, for example. These are more robust and powerful than mobile charging cables. These charging solutions are available from electrical equipment distributors or specialist service providers.
*An intelligent charging station is one that can communicate data and receive commands remotely via the OCPP (Open Charge Point Protocol) communication protocol.
Managing electric vehicle charging on a long-term site
In addition to daily solutions, on a long-term site, faster and multiple charging solutions are needed. The company responsible for the site could even provide this infrastructure on a monetised basis for other companies on site who need to charge their commercial vehicles or site machinery. To do this, you need to ensure that there is a 4G connection on the site so that the charging point can communicate charging data to a management platform (back-end). There are service providers who can make your mobile charging station accessible to the public, reimbursing the company in charge of the site and therefore of the site's power supply. These mobile charging stations still need to be connected to a power source (red 63A site socket), so they are not 100% mobile when charging.
There are, however, DC charging stations with 100% mobile battery accumulators that can be charged quietly at night on a 16A or 32A three-phase connection and provide full power during the day as required.
You can find a list of AC and DC mobile charging stations on our charging station comparator.