As electric vehicles become more mainstream, businesses need to think about how to provide workplace EV charging stations to support their customers and staff, and improve their own bottom line. Businesses are many and varied, and could benefit from workplace EV charging in the following ways:
Electric vehicles have lower running costs than petrol or diesel vehicles, so for businesses where mobility is central, such as taxi drivers or bus companies, rapid EV chargers are the obvious choice.
Where companies run fleets of company cars, fast electric car charging stations installed at work and the home of the staff member will similarly reduce running costs
Having EV charging stations at your place of work will become increasingly vital to attract business. Clients and customers may wish to fast charge their car when visiting your business premises. This is likely to be especially true in the retail/hospitality sectors, where being able to provide charging points will attract customers at the expense of those who do not provide this service.
Your staff are also likely to require the ability to charge their electric cars at work – so it’s important to consider if you want to keep them happy!
There are a range of unique smart features that can be implemented for electric car charging points for the workplace, detailed below.
From first hearing about Joju Solar until the successful completion of my Zappi installation, I have had a good experience. My emails were quickly and thoroughly answered and the self-survey is fairly easy to complete.
I used Joju Solar for installation of Zappi, Harvi and Eddi system to utilise Solar energy for Vehicle charging and water heating. Good price and great communication and installation service.
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Installation of a Zappi was
completed in a day, within a
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7 The whole process was very
straightforward to obtain the
government grant and have
my Zappi charger installed
by Joju to charge my electric
car at home. Price very
reasonable (the cheapest of
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who worked really hard to
ensure everything was done
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I was delighted with the
Zappi installation. Great
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Joju have been brilliant. The
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Dynamic load balancing
Many electric car charge station installations for work require multiple charge points. If all were being used simultaneously this could require an oversized, over-engineered solution, or otherwise risk overloading the electrics. However, our smart chargers feature dynamic load balancing which smartly allocates available power between the units.
So, for example we can set 6 units to charge at a maximum of 22kW. If only one workplace EV charging station is being used, it will receive the full 22kW. If three are being used, this drops to 7.2kW each, and if all 6 are being used, each vehicle receives 3.6kW. Overall it means you can run 6 charging points off of a 22kW supply, instead of something larger and more expensive.
This is because the required infrastructure (wiring, distribution boards, required import capacity) can be kept at more sensible sizes and minimise the cost of the installation. If your electric car parking bays aren’t going to be used at full capacity all the time (as cars come and go), this is an optimal approach to take.
We have adopted this approach across our public car park EV chargepoint installations for Southampton City Council.
Using chargecards
It is possible to set up billing on each charge station, where users pay to charge their vehicles. Rates can be set by the owner, and the units are accessed by a standard RFID charge card. All charge point usage and billing data is controlled by a centralised web portal for easy access by finance departments.
Billing home charging
For businesses running fleets, or paying staff travel expenses it is possible to connect a smart charger at home to the billing system of the business so that fuel costs can be reimbursed automatically.
Start your project
Talk to our commercial projects team on 0207 697 1000 or send us a quotation request
Grants are available for installing electric car charging stations at work. Grants of £350 per charge point are available up to a maximum of 20 charge points. For more details see our Grants for Electric Vehicle Charging Page.
Electric car charging stations from Joju Solar
Joju Solar offer a range of electric vehicle charge stations that are particularly well suited to businesses.
NewMotion smart chargers
NewMotion units come with a smart interface allowing you to see charge point usage and cost data on a portal for all chargers installed. They can be accessed by RFID (charge card) access for extra security and to control billing accounts. You can bill home charged electricity to your employer. New Motion chargers also feature dynamic load balancing to optimise the economics of their installation.
ABB rapid chargers
ABB rapid chargers can charge at 150kW continuously – enough to fully charge even the largest cars in ½ hour. For vehicle applications where fast recharge items are needed, such as taxis and buses, the ABB rapid charger is an ideal solution. Charging powers up to 460kW are available.
APT
The APT Evolt rapid chargers are 50kW DC chargers. Communications (Ethernet & 3G) are integrated to allow permanent connection with remote charging stations, from which charging equipment data and pricing can be monitored in real time.
