Fleet & depot charging
Depot charging that reports per vehicle
A fleet does not need the fastest charger. It needs every vehicle full by the time the first shift leaves, on the connection the depot already has, with a number against each one.
Priced per port, per month · Load management as a module
The hardest easy site in charging
A depot looks straightforward — one owner, one gate, no public. Then every vehicle returns within the same hour, plugs in within the same ten minutes, and each one would pull its full rate at once. That coincidence is how a yard ends up quoted for a grid upgrade it does not actually need.
The second problem is accounting. A fuel card produced a per-vehicle figure without anyone thinking about it. Electricity produces one meter reading for the whole site, and no way to split it, unless something is recording who plugged into which port.
Capacity, attribution, and knowing overnight
A depot fails in the quiet hours. Everything below exists so that the failure is found before the shift is.
The connection you already have
Set the limit the site can draw and the platform shares it across active sessions in real time, throttling rather than tripping. Vehicles finish overnight because they have all night.
A card per vehicle
An RFID card assigned to a vehicle means every session is attributed the moment the driver taps in. Nobody writes anything down, and there is nothing to reconcile in the morning.
Cost per vehicle, not per yard
Energy, duration, and cost recorded against each card, so the depot bill breaks down the way the old fuel report did rather than arriving as one number.
A dead port found at midnight
Alerts on faults and disconnections while there is still time to move a vehicle to another bay. Finding out at six in the morning is what actually costs a shift.
What a depot usually looks like
Return-to-base fleets are the easiest charging case there is, provided the capacity maths is done before the hardware is ordered.
- Charger type
- AC overnight, with DC only where turnaround is genuinely short A van standing from 18:00 to 06:00 has twelve hours to take on a day's range. DC belongs where a vehicle turns around mid-shift, not where it sleeps.
- How many ports
- One per vehicle that stays overnight Sharing ports between vehicles means somebody has to move cables at night. Load balancing is what makes a port per vehicle affordable without a bigger connection.
- Access model
- Closed site, one RFID card per vehicle Card to vehicle rather than card to driver. The vehicle is what the cost needs to land against, and drivers change more often than vans do.
- Pricing model
- No payment — internal cost allocation Nothing is being sold, so sessions are recorded and attributed rather than charged for. That changes if you open a bay to visiting vehicles.
The Platform plan, plus one module most depots add
A depot pays the Platform rate per port, per month, with no upfront license fee; DC fast ports carry a higher rate than AC. What a fleet adds is almost never payments — it is dynamic load balancing, a paid module, switched on per site and quoted as its own line, and a depot where everything plugs in at once needs it.
- Dynamic load balancing, the paid module a simultaneous-return depot is built on, available on either plan
- Operation logs, roles, and an RFID card per vehicle, all in the base platform
- Email support in the base platform, and dedicated support with an SLA on Enterprise, because the window to fix a depot fault is overnight
The revenue share applies to public paid sessions only. A closed depot has none, so a fleet pays the per-port subscription, plus any module it switches on, and nothing else.
Platform
Priced per port, per month, with no upfront license fee. Quoted for your mix of ports and sites, in writing, within one business day.
Get pricingWhat people ask about this
What kinds of fleet is this for?
Any fleet that returns to a base. Taxi fleets, bus fleets, and delivery fleets on last-mile routes are the usual three, and the platform does the same job for three vans as for three hundred.
Will the depot's existing supply take it?
More often than the first quote suggests. Sizing a connection for every vehicle charging at full rate at once assumes a worst case that a twelve-hour standstill never produces. Model the real return profile with your electrical contractor before anything is ordered, and treat a grid upgrade as the last resort rather than the opening line.
Does the platform decide which vehicle charges first?
No. Load balancing shares the available capacity across whatever is plugged in — it does not sequence or schedule sessions, and there is no booking feature. On a return-to-base fleet with a port per vehicle that is usually the right behaviour anyway, because everything has all night.
Can I see what each vehicle cost?
Yes, provided each vehicle has its own RFID card. Sessions are attributed to the card, so the cost lands against the vehicle you assigned it to. The platform is reading the charger, not the vehicle — it knows which card started the session, not which VIN is on the other end of the cable.
What about drivers who take a vehicle home?
If a driver’s own charger speaks OCPP and is connected to your account, those sessions are recorded with energy, time, and cost like any other, and they are attributed to the same card. What you do with that record — reimbursement rate, policy, payroll — stays yours.
Do you supply and install the chargers?
No. WattWisely is the software. Survey, electrical design, hardware, and installation are done by your electrical contractor, and any charger they fit that speaks OCPP 1.6J or 2.0.1 connects to the platform. If you are still at the design stage, contact us and we will say what the platform needs from the site.
What happens if the depot loses its internet connection?
Chargers hold their configuration and keep charging. Sessions that ran while the link was down are reconciled when it returns, so the overnight charge completes and the records still add up.
Start with the vehicles and the shift pattern
How many vehicles, when they return, and when they leave. Those three answers decide almost everything else about a depot.