Question 1

How many chargers does a 40-vehicle depot actually need?

Accepted Answer

It depends on schedule spread, not fleet size. If all 40 vehicles arrive and depart together you need close to 40 charge points. If they leave in waves, 10–14 DC units at 60 kW clear the same fleet at 3–4 sessions each across a 10-hour window. Work it from the arithmetic — total energy, divided by the window, divided by deliverable power per charger — then add buffer for late returns and one faulted charger.

Question 2

Can I run departure-based depot charging on OCPP 1.6 hardware?

Accepted Answer

Yes, with a caveat. OCPP 1.6 gives you charging profiles, a per-charge-point cap and time-based schedules — enough to enforce a site setpoint and sequence a fixed timetable. What it cannot do is receive the departure time and energy request from the vehicle; that arrives with OCPP 2.0.1 and ISO 15118. On 1.6 the platform sources departures from the duty roster and SoC from telematics: workable for bus depots, fragile for ad-hoc logistics.

Question 3

How much smaller can the grid connection get with managed depot charging?

Accepted Answer

Institutional modelling of seven truck-fleet profiles shows managed charging cutting the charging-cluster load by 36–58% against simultaneous charging — 2,500 kW down to 1,100 kW for a 25-truck fleet, for example. The IEA puts the ceiling at up to 60% lower maximum depot demand. In our worked 40-vehicle example, moving to 12 shared chargers under a 300 kW setpoint takes sanctioned load from about 2,000 kVA to 400 kVA.

Question 4

What is the difference between depot charging and public charging management?

Accepted Answer

Public charging manages unknown arrivals and optimises for throughput, uptime and price. Depot charging manages known arrivals and optimises for one outcome — every vehicle at required state of charge at scheduled departure — at the lowest possible sanctioned load. That flips the design goal: a public site wants high charger utilisation, a depot wants the fewest chargers that still clear the schedule, because the fleet is captive.

Question 5

Which single metric proves depot charging is working?

Accepted Answer

State-of-charge-at-departure success rate — the percentage of departures that left at or above the SoC their route required. Sessions, kWh and uptime can all look healthy while a depot still sends a bus out short. Pair it with peak kW against contracted kVA and the two together tell you whether the depot met its obligation, and did so inside the connection you paid for.

Author name: Team

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