What it takes to build charging infrastructure, according to a utility provider

The time it takes to develop on-site electric vehicle charging infrastructure varies from months to years, and an accurate fleet electrification timeline can’t be assessed due to many factors and hidden surprises, such as lead times. With inconsistencies across the nation, including utility capacity, cost of construction, supply chain issues, and more, the only sure advice that can be given to any and every fleet looking to electrify is: “Start early.”

Where and when to start the electrification journey will also look different for each fleet. To alleviate some industry frustration surrounding EV charging infrastructure, Jason Haines,  manager of transportation electrification and grid readiness at Duke Energy, and Mike Straub,  senior products and services manager at Duke Energy, shared their insights from the perspective of the utility provider to help fleets understand why building charging infrastructure can be so complicated.

The two outline what fleets should determine when planning for their charging infrastructure, and then delve into the process according to the utility company.

How fleets should begin planning charging infrastructure

Where will vehicles charge?

Before deciding to build out a charging depot at a fleet facility, it’s important to determine where electric fleet vehicles will charge. Is the fleet a dispersed fleet, where drivers take the vehicles home after each shift? If that’s the case, will the fleet pay for and manage vehicle charging at the home of its employees? Will any of the fleet vehicles use public charging? Will any customers partner with the fleet to build chargers at its sites, such as at a warehouse or a delivery location where a truck could be prone to dwell for several hours?

These are all questions Haines suggests asking during the planning phase of charging infrastructure development.

“Those are things that … would help us manage the grid, would help us save costs for installing extra green boxes, or transformers, all over for our customers,” Haines said, “which could also then save [fleet owners’] cost.”

See also: What are EV truck charging stations’ needs?

Future-proof the site

Another consideration when planning charging infrastructure is to plan. While a fleet might start with five to 10 EVs in operation, if the plan is to eventually transition each vehicle to an EV, then the on-site charging infrastructure should be able to accommodate those future upgrades.

Haines suggested that fleets put upgraded cable in the ground now and plan to add an upgraded transformer later. Fleets could also build a larger concrete pad now that can accommodate that upgraded transformer later “so you don’t have to tear all that up and delay your project in the future.”

“If you look at that long-term future plan, those are the things that you need to communicate through the utility, and your utility should be able to consult you on,” Haines said.

Companies that have successfully built charging infrastructure have also taken this “future-proof” approach. This past May, WattEV opened a public heavy-duty EV charging facility capable of charging EVs using megawatt rapid charging, a technology that isn’t yet available on heavy-duty trucks but is expected to become the standard for charging medium—and heavy-duty EVs.

NFI also built its private charging depot with the future in mind. Ahead of its opening in February, Jim O’Leary, NFI’s VP of assets, told FleetOwner: 

“We didn’t want to just build a site that would meet the needs of … today,” he said. “We wanted to future-proof it in a way where we would be able to make the upgrades necessary as technology (advanced).” 

Utility requirements to build charging infrastructure 

While each facility operates differently, both Straub and Haines stressed the importance of communicating future EV plans with a facility as soon as possible. 

“We want to know about your project years in advance,” Haines said. He suggested fleets call their utility to lay out their own five-year plans, let the utility tell them their circuit’s capacity, and offer up as many project details as possible to ensure smooth infrastructure development.

While communicating with a utility provider several years in advance can help expedite the planning process, each fleet—in collaboration with its utility—will carve out its own path to charging infrastructure.

Straub said that sometimes it’s easier for a utility to update the fleet facility’s current cabling and transformer, “but sometimes it’s easier for us to drop in a new transformer and new wires.” 

See also: No juice, no EVs: Utilities weak link in fleet transition 

Costs will vary according to the fleet’s utility company. Some utility companies will use “revenue credits,” Straub said. A utility may choose to employ revenue credits with charging infrastructure construction if it determines the revenue brought upon by the upgrades will offset the cost needed to upgrade it over a designated period.

“But if it’s a special circumstance, if we have to run extra poles or extra wire, if we’re doing some extra construction, then that revenue might not justify,” Straub said. “We might need to have that cost in aid of construction, that initial payment, to help with the cost of bringing those utilities to your facility.”

Other factors could increase the cost of the infrastructure development for a fleet’s site, such as the wiring that brings power to a facility. “If those wires get constrained and they don’t have enough capacity to bring power to your site, then we have to do upgrades on those as well,” Straub said. “Sometimes those can be a burden to the customer.”

Instances such as this highlight the benefits of speaking with a utility provider in the early stages of charging infrastructure development to give them the time to plan updates and add capacity to a constrained circuit in advance, Straub said.

Haines echoed the need to communicate with a utility provider early. Fleets located in areas of constrained circuits might find themselves waiting years before charging infrastructure is operational because of the steps required from utilities before they can build out capacity. 

Increasing capacity requires engineering studies to take place. If a substation is needed to increase capacity, then the utility must work with landowners to build one at a nearby location. If no substation can be built, Haines said the utility must extend power lines—again, working with landowners and homeowners to facilitate the extension. That process alone can take years. 

In addition, there are lead times to contend with. As of this past March, lead times for a transformer were about 12 months.  

The long journey to EV operations 

There is no one-size-fits-all approach to fleet electrification—especially with charging infrastructure. While what Straub and Haines outlined above might seem complicated and arduous, fleet leaders should take heart that fleet-wide electrification is underway across the nation. 

Fleet leaders can take notes from programs like Run on Less, which observes and reports on the operations of electric vehicles running in real-life fleets and the depots that charge them. None of these fleets grew EV operations overnight. It took planning and patience.