You electrified your fleet. Then the electricity bill arrived.
You electrified your fleet. Then the electricity bill arrived. Nobody told you that charging 40 vans simultaneously at 7am would trigger a capacity tariff that wipes out your diesel savings.
Fleet electrification has a hidden cost that most operators discover only after the first quarterly energy invoice. Charging a large fleet simultaneously creates a demand spike that can push a depot's 15-minute peak consumption to multiples of its contracted capacity; triggering expensive capacity tariff bands and, in some cases, automatic DSO intervention to limit the connection. The solution is not to charge more slowly. It is to decouple the grid connection from the charging event. 247 Energy storage systems charge from the grid during off-peak hours; overnight, when capacity tariffs are lowest; then discharge during the morning fleet departure window, absorbing the charging load without creating a grid peak. The fleet charges at full speed. The grid sees a flat, managed demand profile. And the capacity tariff remains under control.