🛢️ When you build a new depot, you think about parking bays, turning curves, the workshop, the office. Energy is just an invoice at the end of the month. With diesel, that was right. With electricity, it’s a missed opportunity.
The depot is no longer just the place where trucks rest their wheels and diesel sits passively in the tank. It’s now the place where you actively produce, store, charge and ideally also resell electricity. New roles. New processes.
What this means in practice:
☀️ Solar from your own roof lowers your grid consumption.
🔋 A battery storage system helps cut your grid fees.
🌝 The battery also shifts the sun into the night, when your trucks are back on the yard and need to charge.
That’s the mandatory part.
🚚 The better part starts when you go further and open up your depot. Other fleets need to charge too, their drivers need toilets, showers, food. And while their trucks are charging, they get a proper break at your place. Then they come back, because you know what matters to them.
💰 Your former cost block turns into a site with revenue. And because you now move larger volumes of electricity, you get different conditions on the market. You can buy power directly at the spot market. And if you want to take it a step further, you can sell flexibility and grid services. You don’t have to do this yourself – there are partners who handle that for you.
⚡ This is how „charging as a cost centre“ becomes „charging as a side business“ and then another revenue source of your business, one that helps finance the electrification itself.
💡 Treat your depot as your private fuel station and you’ll charge expensively. Build it as an energy asset and you’ll drive cheaper than your competitors while turning a pure cost centre into a revenue source.
This stopped being a vision a while ago. It’s the next decision being made in your yard.
