Clenergy Fleet Electrification

For this fleet electrification project funded by Innovate UK, DG Cities is working in partnership with Clenergy EV, Ashfield, Nottingham and Greenwich Council’s fleet managers. Together, we are investigating practical infrastructure software solutions for zero-emission fleet management.

To meet emission and transition targets, municipal and commercial fleet managers need to rapidly accelerate the move to zero-carbon operations. However, an EV fleet operates optimally only if the various resources (vehicles, the depot and the operations) are all aligned. The aim of this project is to help fleets successfully and more efficiently transition to electric power and achieve the maximum benefits from the transition by streamlining EV fleet operations once electrification is in place.

To do this, we are developing a single system that enables EV fleet management to account for vehicle data, such as charge levels, as well as vehicle allocation and task scheduling to drivers. This system will allow fleet managers to assign vehicles to tasks based on current charge levels and expected consumption for the first time. It will also allow EV chargers to be assigned to vehicles (at the depot or off-site), based on charger speed and grid availability, as well as upcoming tasks for the following days.

Although various components exist to some extent, this project brings all these elements together by providing a tool which integrates vehicle data (telematics/charge levels), charger availability (power, allocation and speed) and fleet scheduling (future workloads, in-transit routing) into a single platform. Our work aims to reduce infrastructure costs by using fewer EV chargers across a fleet, reduce operational costs by charging vehicles at times of low electricity costs and allowing vehicle-to-grid transfer for peak times. It also matches vehicle charge data to fleet scheduling decisions in real-time, while integrating with the systems that fleet managers currently use to ease transition.

The adoption and application of this tool will reduce barriers to fleet decarbonisation, helping aid a successful UK response to net-zero carbon commitments and the UK Clean Growth Strategy. DG Cities is monitoring both financial cost and carbon reduction achieved throughout the project, as well as providing an example to fleets in various levels of electrification, giving them a roadmap towards zero-carbon operations. As part of this, we are running live trials with fleets of vehicles and charging points managed by Ashfield, Greenwich and Nottingham councils. These trials will allow us to streamline the platform, validate technical feasibility and test the wider commercial proposition.