Decarbonizing Fleets at Scale: PowerFlex and 1898 & Co. Help You Prepare

With the widespread availability of a variety of electric vehicles, companies around the country are considering how adding EVs to replace gas-powered vehicles could benefit their business. Some are looking for emissions reductions, others want to take advantage of incentive programs, and pretty much everyone wants to benefit from cost savings.

The teams at PowerFlex and 1898 & Co. have learned the benefits of fleet electrification are deeply tied to a company’s goals, its location, and how it uses its fleet. A company located in an area that is actively incentivizing EV charger installations with big goals for sustainability will design a completely different fleet electrification strategy than a company working to implement cost savings primarily in an area with few incentives available, perhaps with a need for multi-phase pilot projects to find the best approach.

The subjectivity of these varied goals means that both 1898 & Co. and PowerFlex have approached their fleet electrification customers with open minds and a wide variety of tools, customizing EV fleet charging solutions to meet companies’ unique needs. Here’s a look at how decarbonizing your fleet can be done deliberately and with your business goals in mind.  

Added Value Through a Forward-Thinking Approach

The PowerFlex and 1898 & Co. teams bring valuable experience to the entire process of converting your fleet, starting from your first forays into researching the benefits of electrification. Let's explore the fleet EV charging implementation process and how it can seamlessly integrate into existing fleet infrastructure.

Exploration: Get to Know Your Existing Fleet Needs Inside and Out

Understanding electrification starts with understanding your fleet through an operations assessment. This involves assessing what your fleet is currently doing and the costs associated with each element of the fleet. Considerations include:

• What kinds of vehicles are in use, and for what tasks? For instance, how many hours/miles per day are they in operation, and what kind of time constraints and payload demands do they have? In particular, how much range do they cover in a given day?
• Where do fleet vehicles park and for how long? It's only possible to find strategic savings if these times can coincide with the availability of an EV charging station, and if the vehicles that are most vital to fleet operations have enough "dwell time" to charge before their next route.
• What are the total costs of ownership for your current vehicles versus the proposed electric equivalents? You ideally want your electric fleet vehicles to cost less over time compared to the gas-powered models such that you eventually achieve payback. You should take the benefits of potential emissions reductions into account too.

With this information in mind, you can better assess the viability of an electrified fleet for your business. Even if you're not rapidly scaling a decarbonized fleet, you can use this assessment to identify pilot projects with the greatest possible returns. For example, you might consider starting with converting vehicles whose routes would support charging only once a week.

You'll also need to decide whether to decommission gas-powered vehicles early or wait until they're at the end of their useful life. Maintenance needs factor in here, and you'll want to make sure you're fully understanding the costs per mile driven of your current vehicles versus the potential savings and payback periods for choosing particular EVs.

Planning and Implementation: Balancing the Needs of Today and Tomorrow

Once you’re feeling confident about your company’s fleet electrification plan, partners like 1898 & Co. and PowerFlex continue to execute detailed assessments and designs to ensure your project is a success.

This stage includes assessing the best options for electric vehicle charging infrastructure. It's essential to make contact with your local utility to determine how much of the local electrical infrastructure will need to be upgraded in order to stay within code while also accommodating the high electricity needs of electric vehicle chargers. In many cases, it is possible to design a system both for a smaller pilot project while also laying the groundwork and make-ready infrastructure for a much larger expansion, saving time and effort in the future.

Based on this information, you'll receive detailed financial evaluations for you to assess, as well as estimates on your estimated emissions reductions. When stakeholders at your company want to understand the comprehensive impacts on operations, emissions, and the financial bottom line, we're ready to provide those details. Additionally, real-time data will be made available to you throughout implementation, allowing you to report on the effectiveness of your system.

How PowerFlex X Energy Management Saves Fleet Operators Money, Time, and Infrastructure Complexity

One of the most valuable features of PowerFlex X — PowerFlex’s intelligent energy management platform — is its ability to leverage Adaptive Load Management^® (ALM) to save on costly upgrades to your electrical infrastructure. Patented algorithms allow chargers to ramp up to faster charging rates when enough amperage is available, as well as ramp down to allow for many more chargers to operate at once — all while safely using the existing electrical infrastructure.

In fact, ALM allows for the same electrical infrastructure to support 6 to 10 times more chargers than would be possible without load balancing technology. This can not only save you money on the front end, but also gives the option to scale up in the future if you’re not quite ready to expand now.

Intelligent energy management can also take advantage of time-of-use pricing. For example, a state like California might offer their lowest-cost electricity from 10 p.m. to 4 a.m. — during what’s considered off-peak hours. By slow-charging fleet vehicles until 10 p.m. and then ramping up charging to the highest safe level during those inexpensive times, PowerFlex X allows you to “buy” electricity at the cheapest possible rate. The platform tracks charging progress and ensures that vehicles will reach their intended state of charge in time for the next day’s routes.

PowerFlex X’s features have their biggest impact once you've launched your EV charging system, but implementing the platform right at the start of the project — as early as when you begin communicating with your local energy utility provider — ensures you’re set up for success from day one.

Execution: Ongoing Value From PowerFlex X

As your project moves forward, you'll be using various aspects of the PowerFlex X platform to integrate your new electric fleet vehicles into your wider operations. Features like the following will continue to help you manage your fleet efficiently:

• Event-driven architecture takes data from the onsite controller, sending constant updates from each charger, solar panel, or battery system to the platform. These data points are integrated with outside data that includes important information like demand responses from the grid and weather forecasts, automatically refreshed every five minutes.
• That same data is readily searchable and can be downloaded into easy-to-read reports that help you claim incentives, track efficiency, and present details to internal stakeholders when it's time to plan for future phases of fleet electrification.

• With real-time monitoring, you'll be able to perform certain functions remotely. Being able to start and stop charging as well as resetting chargers from afar can save on service calls. It's also possible to send software updates and download diagnostic logs, all from the PowerFlex X dashboard.

• Features like "Depot Manager Vehicle View" integrate with your existing systems for managing fleet vehicles, helping you tell at a glance who is charged and who needs to be charged. This makes it possible to quickly and efficiently swap out vehicles that are waiting for a charger.

• The platform also has scheduling and alert features, allowing you to create precise plans for when each vehicle will be charged and see if a vehicle isn't on track to complete the necessary level of charging in time for its anticipated departure time. These alerts can be configured for SMS, email, or the app.

EV Charging Stations Are Live: How is PowerFlex Still Assisting Your Project?

EV charging systems grow in complexity as you electrify more of your fleet, but PowerFlex X is designed for scale. You won't need to learn a whole different system if you opt to electrify a larger part of your fleet or manage multiple site locations as they ramp up to more EV vehicles.

Part of why we focus on forward thinking when it comes to fleet electrification is that we know investments in pilot projects often do see valuable results. And we know our customers often come back wanting to add more chargers and more vehicles. Over time, you may want to add other types of assets like solar panels and energy storage to provide clean power to your EV chargers and increase your energy resilience. Rest assured, PowerFlex X combines it all into a cohesive, optimized system that’s easy to manage.

Ready to see how PowerFlex X can help you navigate the fleet electrification process from pilot trials to large-scale adoption? Sign up today for a free demonstration of how we can put our intelligent energy management platform to work for you.