Yard Management and Depot Layout

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How to Define Layout of Fleet EV Infrastructure for Charging Depots?

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When you select the charger model, or soon afterwards, you’ll need to start planning where charging stations will be located in your EV fleet depot layout. This means taking into consideration the number of chargers, the number of vehicles per shift or day, your existing operations (warehouse, driveways, etc.), and security measures.

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Most sites will not have a 1:1 ratio of vehicles and chargers. By operating at 1:2, 1:3, or even 1:4 ratio of chargers and vehicles, you’ll reduce grid construction costs and CAPEX for charging equipment. 

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However, this might lead to more driving activities at night or during your peak charging period. In some cases, vehicles might end up being constantly moved around, parked, swapped, etc. 

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Emerging best practices for electric vehicle charging infrastructure emphasize careful planning to avoid common pitfalls. Issues we’ve seen include the following.

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• Short charger cables that require complex parking maneuvers
• Chargers not protected by bollards and are hit by trucks
• Chargers are installed too high for quick access and inspections

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When planning your yard layout, it’s important to align your charging station plans with how ground operators manage EV fleet depot charging operations. In many cases staff have a window of 4 to 8 hours to charge all vehicles. Any delay, interruption, or mistake leads to delays the following morning. Possible ways to assist the group ops team are intelligent monitoring alerts (e.g. “vehicle fully charged” notifications), central monitoring dashboard (e.g. large screen showing the status of plugs), and training.

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It’s easy to underestimate the training side of things when developing charging station plans for fleet EV infrastructure, and fleets might be tempted to save money in this area. While training might be expensive, it means your employees understand the systems more fully and carry out their duties safely and efficiently. If a site manager ignores or doesn't understand certain information, it can cause catastrophic outcomes such as long site downtime, angry customers, or even business failure. To save costs, you could designate an in-house trainer and task them with providing monthly training sessions to update your global operations team. This holds the team more accountable, as well as making sure you deliver high quality to your stakeholders.

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