ALT-POWER
ELECTRIC TRUCK CHARGING FAQS Many trucking operators know that in years to come they will need to be setting up a charging station for their trucks, so PowerTorque asked JET Charge about some of the electric truck charging FAQs which the company comes across.
W
hether we like it or not there are some major changes in the future for the trucking industry. The reality of climate change is dawning across Australia, and this will, one day, introduce an increasing drive towards zero emission trucks. Exactly what that day will look like and when that day will come is uncertain, but that day is becoming inevitable. There is plenty of debate about exactly how Australia will get to a lower carbon trucking industry. There is also an ongoing debate about electric power, hydrogen and other forms of gas power. One thing seems increasingly certain, there will be a lot of electric trucks on our roads around our cities, handling the short to medium haul work. If this is the case in the future, the implication for road transport is that it needs to think about how it is going to move over to this power source, whether it is in five, ten, fifteen or twenty years time. If an expanding trucking operation
48
POWERTORQUE May/June 2022
is developing a new depot, they may need to think about putting in a fuel bowser, but they definitely need to be prepared to make sure the basics are in place for any future electric vehicle charging system. PowerTorque sat down with Alex Bowler, who is the Business Development Sector Manager for bus and truck at JET Charge, currently concentrating on the bus industry. Some bus operators are already well down the road to electrification, years ahead of the trucking industry, but our industry can learn a lot from how the project is developing. JET Charge was created in 2013 to supply and install electric vehicle chargers beginning with installing EV Chargers for Tesla owners in Victoria. The company has grown to be a supplier of the full range of EV charging needs. JET Charge provide services across the EV charging industry, all the way from selling the accessories an EV owner needs in their garage, to setting up full blown charging infrastructure for large fleets.
“We are already doing a lot of work with logistics fleets, and we are also doing more and more work with bus depots,” says Alex. “The size of the jobs we do can vary greatly depending on the size of the fleet that is being transitioned at each site. For operators with one or two vehicles, job requirements are very different in comparison to a fleet with hundreds of trucks. The fundamental design principals are similar, but the size, scale and cost of the infrastructure increases with the fleet size. “Every site is going to need the basics, like a connection to the grid or power source which runs through some sort of low voltage distribution on the site to connect up to the chargers. For bus and truck charging, you’re going to need a 3-phase connection to get enough power to the vehicles. “There are two different types of chargers you’ll need to consider, alternating current (AC) and direct current (DC). All vehicle batteries are ultimately fed with DC electricity. The conversion or rectification
