EV Charging for Fleet & Depot Charging

A fleet depot is the one car park where the vehicles come home every night and sit still for eight to fourteen hours. That single fact — a long, predictable, return-to-base dwell — changes the whole engineering brief. You are not chasing the fast turnover of a retail rapid; you are quietly refilling a known set of vans, HGVs or pool cars overnight, on your own land, on your own tariff. That makes depot charging the cheapest energy-per-mile most operators will ever buy — provided you size the incoming grid connection for the whole yard charging at once, not one charger at a time. Get that one number wrong and the project stalls; get it right and the economics are excellent.

Why a depot is the opposite of a public rapid

Everything about depot charging flows from the dwell profile. A van that returns at 18:00 and leaves at 06:00 has a twelve-hour window to recover, say, 60-80 kWh. You do not need a 150kW rapid to do that — a 7kW AC socket delivers roughly 84 kWh over twelve hours, comfortably more than most last-mile rounds consume. So the default depot charger is slow, cheap and plentiful, not fast and expensive.

That inverts the public-charging logic. On a retail forecourt, power is scarce and dwell is short, so you buy fewer, bigger chargers and price the electrons at a premium. In a depot, dwell is long and cheap overnight power is abundant, so you buy many small AC points and spread the load across the night. The exceptions are fast-turnaround duty cycles — double-shifted vans, buses on a school run, or a shared pool where the same bay serves several vehicles a day. Those genuinely need 60-150kW DC to top up in the gaps between shifts.

The practical rule: match charger speed to the shortest realistic dwell for each vehicle group, not the average. Map your yard by return time, departure time and daily mileage first. That telematics exercise, not the charger catalogue, is what determines the mix — and it is the difference between a depot that runs on cheap overnight power and one that ends up peak-charging at a premium. If you want the underlying numbers, our cost guide breaks down installed prices per charger type.

The recommended charger mix

Most depots land on a tiered mix rather than a single charger type. AC handles the overnight fleet; a small DC bank covers the vehicles that can’t wait. Sizing the DC bank conservatively — often just one or two units serving the whole yard through scheduling — is where the savings live, because DC kit and its grid demand cost several times more than AC.

Vehicle group	Typical dwell	Recommended charger	Indicative installed cost (2026)*
Overnight cars / light vans	8-14 hrs	7kW AC	from ~£1,500 per point
Larger vans, higher mileage	8-12 hrs	22kW AC (with billing)	~£3,000-£5,500
Double-shift / fast turnaround	1-3 hrs gap	50kW DC	~£10,000-£35,000
Buses, HGVs, heavy duty	short windows	150kW+ DC	~£25,000-£60,000+

*Indicative market ranges as at 2026, installed, excluding any grid upgrade — which on a depot is frequently the largest single line item. Take your own advice on final specification.

A realistic 30-van last-mile depot might run 25-30 × 7-22kW AC points and one or two 50kW DC units for exceptions — not thirty rapids. Because AC points share a single managed circuit, adding more sockets later is far cheaper than adding DC capacity. Design the AC backbone generously and keep DC to what the duty cycle truly demands. See how the numbers stack up in is car park EV charging worth it?

The single biggest constraint: total simultaneous power draw

Here is the constraint that decides depot projects. Thirty 7kW chargers is a 210kW connected load. Add a couple of 50kW DC units and you are asking the yard’s incoming supply for well over 300kW — often far more than the existing service was ever built to deliver. The limiting factor is almost never the chargers; it is the capacity of your DNO connection and the on-site infrastructure (main incomer, transformer, switchgear) behind it.

Important domain point: import-only EV chargers connect through the DNO’s demand-connection process (the ENA ‘Connecting EVs & Heat Pumps’ route), not a G99 application. G99/G98 are generation and export standards for solar, battery or V2G — a plain depot charger neither generates nor exports, so anyone quoting you a G99 job for AC vans has misunderstood the work. Where a fleet later adds solar canopies or battery storage, those assets bring G99 into scope — but the chargers themselves do not.

The good news: since 1 April 2023 there is no wider-network reinforcement charge, so you no longer pay for upgrades further up the grid. But you may still fund the local connection. For an AC-heavy depot, dynamic load balancing (DLB) frequently avoids a DNO upgrade altogether by capping the yard’s total draw to the existing capacity and sharing it intelligently across chargers overnight. For a DC-heavy depot, you may need a customer HV substation — a per-site cost the DNO quotes individually, ranging from tens of thousands to low-hundreds-of-thousands of pounds. Apply for the connection early; DNO timelines, not installation, are usually the critical path. Our funded vs owner-operated guide covers who carries that grid risk under each model.

Smart scheduling and half-hourly tariffs

Scheduling is what turns a large connected load into a small simultaneous one — and it is the biggest lever in depot economics. Because every vehicle has a long dwell, you rarely need them all charging at once. Orchestration software staggers the starts, prioritises the earliest departures, and holds the yard’s total draw under a set ceiling. In practice, intelligent scheduling cuts the required charger and connection capacity by around 30-40% versus sizing for everything plugging in simultaneously — often removing the need for a DNO upgrade entirely.

The second lever is the tariff. Depots almost always sit on a half-hourly commercial electricity contract, where price varies through the day. Overnight and off-peak windows can be a fraction of daytime rates, so software that shifts charging into the cheapest half-hours can materially lower cost per mile without a driver lifting a finger. Vehicles are simply told to be full by their departure time and left to fill in the cheapest slots between.

To make this work you want:

• OCPP open-protocol hardware so chargers, back-office and any future energy management talk to each other, and you are not locked to one vendor
• MID-certified metering where you need to bill or reconcile energy per vehicle, per department or per driver
• Load management (DLB) built in from day one — retrofitting it after a full-power install is expensive
• Departure-time / SOC-based scheduling, not simple timers, so a late-returning van still leaves charged

This is also where a depot beats public charging on VAT and duty: you are buying wholesale-ish electricity on your own supply, not paying a public network’s 61-92p/kWh retail rate.

How depot charging gets funded

Depot charging is usually funded very differently from public forecourts, because the operator both owns the vehicles and consumes the electrons — there is no third-party revenue share to chase. The infrastructure is a fleet cost, so it typically comes through capex or an equipment lease alongside the vehicles themselves, and the return shows up as lower fuel and maintenance spend rather than charging income.

Two funding routes still apply directly to depots as at 2026:

• The 100% First-Year Allowance on new EV charge-point equipment, extended to 31 March 2027 (Corporation Tax; 5 April 2027 for Income Tax). For a taxpaying fleet this is usually worth more than any grant, because it lets you write off the full installed cost against profits in year one. Second-hand or mixed-use kit falls back to the Annual Investment Allowance. Take your own tax advice.
• The Workplace Charging Scheme (WCS) — up to £500 per socket (raised from £350 on 1 April 2026), 75% of cost, capped at 40 sockets / £20,000 across all your sites, confirmed to 31 March 2027. WCS covers workplace, staff and fleet off-street bays, so where your depot’s charging bays double as staff or fleet parking they qualify. It does not cover public off-street parking.

Note what has closed so you don’t build a case on it: the dedicated EV infrastructure grant for staff and fleets closed on 31 March 2026, and ORCS closed in 2025 (folded into LEVI, which is council-only). VAT-registered businesses can generally recover input VAT on the installation. For the full, current picture — including the landlord grant if you lease your depot — see grants and funding, and when you’re ready to size a connection and mix for your yard, start a feasibility quote.

Frequently asked questions

How many chargers does a fleet depot actually need?

Fewer than most operators expect. Because vehicles dwell 8-14 hours overnight, you rarely need them all charging simultaneously, and smart scheduling typically cuts the required charger and connection capacity by 30-40%. A 30-van last-mile depot often runs on 25-30 slow 7-22kW AC points plus one or two 50kW DC units for fast-turnaround exceptions — not thirty rapids. Map each vehicle group by its shortest realistic dwell and daily mileage first; that telematics exercise, not the charger catalogue, sets the number.

Do depot EV chargers need a G99 application?

No. Import-only EV chargers connect through the DNO’s demand-connection process (the ENA ‘Connecting EVs & Heat Pumps’ route), not G99. G99/G98 are generation and export standards for solar, battery or V2G — a plain depot charger only draws power, so it doesn’t apply. G99 only comes into scope if you later add on-site generation such as solar canopies or battery storage. Your real early task is applying to the DNO for demand capacity, because their connection timeline is usually the critical path.

Will our existing depot supply cope, or do we need a grid upgrade?

It depends on your total simultaneous draw. Thirty 7kW chargers is 210kW of connected load — often more than an existing yard supply was built for. For AC-heavy depots, dynamic load balancing frequently caps the total draw to your current capacity and avoids a DNO upgrade entirely. DC-heavy depots may need a customer HV substation, quoted per-site by the DNO from tens of thousands to low-hundreds-of-thousands of pounds. Since April 2023 there’s no wider-network reinforcement charge, and smart scheduling often removes the upgrade need altogether — so apply early and model the load before assuming the worst.