HGV Depot Charging: 3 Decisions UK Fleets Must Make First
For most UK fleets, HGV depot charging is the primary and one of the most cost-effective ways to power electric trucks, provided you plan around grid capacity, duty cycles and grant timing. Three things decide whether a site works: the power your depot can draw, how your vehicles actually operate, and when you apply for funding. Start with a feasibility review and an early conversation with your distribution network operator (DNO).
TL;DR:
Rigid vehicles parked overnight commonly need 20 to 100 kW, while double shifted artics may need at least 250 kW for between shift top ups.
Plan for depots to deliver 80% to 90% of HGV charging; public 350 kW and 1 MW sites mainly support longer journeys.
The Depot Charging Scheme covers up to 70% of charge point and civil costs, capped at £1 million per organization; align applications with delivery deadlines.
Check your Agreed Supply Capacity and consult the DNO before design; large depots may need costly medium voltage upgrades that take many months.
Smart charging, storage, and flexible connections can lower initial grid capacity needs; test charger and software compatibility with a small vehicle pilot first.
Table of Contents
What should you confirm before commissioning a feasibility survey?
How do grid connection and DNO engagement affect your project?
How do smart charging, storage and solar limit grid upgrades?
Which charger types and specifications suit different HGV depots?
How should chargers connect to fleet management systems and telematics?
What are the best operational practices for managing depot charging?
What should you confirm before commissioning a feasibility survey?
A short checklist saves weeks of rework. Before you spend on surveys, settle these points:
Permissions and eligibility: confirm you own the depot or hold a lease that allows works, and that you meet the Depot Charging Scheme rules, including evidence of UK operation.
Vehicle inventory: list vehicle types, battery sizes if known, overnight parking positions and shift patterns, because these drive every later decision, as the Truck charging and TCO study shows.
Grid position: find your current Agreed Supply Capacity (ASC) from your meter reference and book a DNO connection surgery early, as Energy UK advises.
Grant timing: note which application window fits your project start date, using the scheme page as your reference.
Charging model: decide whether private, semi-private or semi-public access suits your site, using the definitions in the Truck depot charging report.
If you can answer these, a survey will be quick and the quote will be realistic. If you cannot, that gap is itself the first piece of work.
How do you match charger power to your duty cycles?
Duty cycle is a key factor in choosing the charger you need. A rigid vehicle returning in the evening and leaving the next morning has hours of slack. A double-shifted artic has almost none.
Overnight charging: most rigid and shorter-range HGVs can work with lower-power chargers, commonly in the 20–100 kW range, according to the Truck charging and TCO study.
Depot rapid charging: double-shifted artics often need high-power chargers, around 250 kW and above, for top-ups between shifts.
En-route charging: public sites at 350 kW and 1 MW support longer trips, but the depot still supplies most of the energy.
Depot charging will carry the bulk of the load: the IET guide states that 80–90% of electric HGV charging will take place at depots.
Our recommendation matches practitioner advice reported by Green Fleet: build a mixed-mode charger fleet around your peak operational needs, not a single power standard. Paying for 250 kW on every bay wastes capital. Putting 22 kW on a double-shift lane wastes vehicle time.
How do grid connection and DNO engagement affect your project?
The grid is where depot projects most often stall. An electric fleet can lift site demand far above existing peaks, and eFREIGHT 2030 research found that electricity demand from electric HGVs can exceed current site peaks by large multiples.
Work through it in this order:
Find your current ASC using your meter reference.
Book a DNO connection surgery to test headroom before you design anything.
Establish whether a medium-voltage connection is needed. Large depots often need one, and reinforcement can be costly and take many months, as the Truck depot charging report notes.
Ask about flexible or ramped connections, and test whether storage reduces the immediate reinforcement need.
Install future-proof ducting during the first works.
Pro Tip: Oversized ducts and cables cost little at the start and avoid a second excavation when you add bays, a point also made by Energy UK.
Our own guides on fitting more chargers without grid reinforcement cover the capacity checks in more detail.
Which grants can fund your depot and vehicles?
Two government routes matter most, and they work best when planned together.
Up to 70% of charge point and civil costs: the Depot Charging Scheme funds up to 70%, capped at £1 million per organisation across all sites, within a £170 million multi-year programme.
Depot Charging Scheme: it part-funds charge points and the civil works around them. Organisations should check the application requirements, and projects must meet delivery deadlines. Shared sites must follow the cost-recovery rules.
Plug-in Truck Grant: it cuts vehicle purchase cost, and the government has announced discounts of up to £120,000 on new electric trucks, with caps varying by weight.
Wider package: both sit within a £1 billion government package for zero-emission trucks and vans.
Timing tip: line up application windows with procurement and DNO lead times, because a missed delivery date can undo a funded project.
Our guide to future-proofing transport fleets explains how grants fit into a wider plan.
What drives cost, and how can you finance it?
Think in terms of whole-life cost, not the headline price of a charger.
Capital items: chargers, civil works, grid reinforcement and metering.
Running costs: energy, network charges, and maintenance, as set out in the Energy Saving Trust toolkit.
Financing routes: outright purchase, lease, fully funded installs, charging as a service (CaaS) and revenue-share models. Energy Systems Catapult describes models that minimise upfront cost and stresses landlord approval, space and commercial terms.
Comparison discipline: include energy management software and maintenance in every quote, or the cheapest bid will not be the cheapest option.
If you run several depots, stage the rollout. It spreads spend and lets you use more than one grant window. Our installation cost guide breaks down typical cost components.
How do smart charging, storage and solar limit grid upgrades?
Smart charging is often the cheapest capacity you can buy. Load management staggers and prioritises sessions so that bays do not all draw their maximum at once. eFREIGHT 2030 modelling suggests that smart charging, storage and flexible connections can allow smaller initial connections and reduce reinforcement delays.
Battery storage and solar PV can cut instantaneous draw further, which makes a flexible connection viable. Check that chargers and back-office software work together and can honour your priorities, for example giving the first departure the first full charge, as the IET guide explains.
Pro Tip: Run a small pilot with a few vehicles first. It tests your assumptions for far less money than a full build.
Our guide to smart charging for fleets covers load management in practice.
What does a realistic timeline look like?
Most projects follow the same sequence, and the grid is usually the critical path:
Feasibility study and energy modelling.
DNO engagement.
Grant application.
Procurement.
Civil and electrical works.
Commissioning.
Plan for months, not weeks, if reinforcement is needed, and consider flexible interim connections so you can start charging sooner. For grants, have your proof of UK operation, depot ownership or lease details and a delivery schedule ready, as the scheme guidance requires.
The next step is simple: commission a commercial feasibility review and book a DNO connection surgery in the same week.
How should you choose and lay out your depot site?
Layout decisions made on paper cost nothing. Made on tarmac, they cost a great deal. Start by mapping how vehicles actually move: arrival order, dwell time, departure order and where trailers are dropped.
Place chargers so a vehicle can plug in where it naturally parks. Forcing drivers to reposition a tractor unit at night adds delay and risk. Allow turning space for articulated vehicles and keep cable reach, bollard protection and clear walkways in view from the start.
Keep chargers close to the electrical supply and the intake point. Long cable runs add civil cost and voltage losses, so grouping bays near the substation or main switchroom usually saves money. Where the yard is large, consider more than one charging zone fed from a central distribution board.
Leave room to grow. Mark future bays on the drawings and size ducting for them now, as Energy UK recommends. Finally, think about access. A depot that lets partners or other hauliers charge needs a separate entry arrangement and metering, one of the reasons the semi-private and semi-public models in the Truck depot charging report differ so much from purely private charging.
Which charger types and specifications suit different HGV depots?
Match the hardware to the job, bay by bay. The Energy Saving Trust gives examples running from 22 kW AC for overnight depot charging up to 150 kW DC for faster turnaround.
Slower AC units suit rigids and vehicles with long overnight dwell. They are cheaper, draw less from the grid and are easier to connect. Mid-power DC chargers suit mixed fleets that need a faster turnaround but not constant top-ups. High-power DC chargers, around 250 kW and above, fit double-shifted artics, as the Truck charging and TCO study describes.
Check connector standards against your vehicles before you order. The IET guide details socket types and smart charging requirements, and the choice affects which trucks can use which bays. Look for dynamic load management, remote monitoring, RFID or app authentication and metering that supports cost allocation.
Be careful with power. The Energy Saving Trust warns that DC chargers can take a large share of site capacity and may involve the DNO. A depot with higher-powered units asks far more of the grid than one with lower-powered units, so size the mix against your ASC before you buy.
How should chargers connect to fleet management systems and telematics?
A charger that does not talk to your fleet systems leaves value on the table. Integration lets the charging software know which vehicle is plugged in, its state of charge and when it must leave.
With that data, load management can prioritise intelligently: a truck leaving at 4am gets energy first, while one parked for longer waits for cheaper off-peak periods. Energy UK advises prioritising off-peak charging to avoid high peak grid tariffs, and integration is how that happens automatically rather than by a person walking the yard.
Ask suppliers about open standards and data access. You want charging records to flow into your fleet or telematics platform for cost reporting, driver accountability and energy use per route. Check who owns the data and whether you can export it if you change supplier.
Confirm compatibility early. The IET guide stresses that back-office software and hardware must meet the fleet’s prioritisation needs. Our EV charging software can support this kind of management.
What are the best operational practices for managing depot charging?
Good operations turn installed hardware into reliable uptime. Start with a written charging plan that says which vehicle uses which bay, by when it must be full and who responds when something fails.
Train drivers to plug in on return, every time. A missed connection is the most common cause of a vehicle not being ready. Give yard staff a simple way to report faults and set clear targets for how fast they are fixed.
Review the data monthly. Look at energy delivered, peak demand, session failures and vehicles that left under-charged. Small changes in scheduling often free up capacity without new hardware, which delays or removes the need for reinforcement.
Keep maintenance on a schedule. Inspect connectors, cables and bollards, and keep firmware current. A service contract with defined response times protects your operation, and our EV charger maintenance services are available.
Finally, keep refining. As electrification grows over several years, the IET guide recommends gradual planning over 5–15 years, so review your charger mix against the vehicles you actually run. Our post on operational-first depot charging expands on this approach.
Why we plan around operations first
We start with how your vehicles work, not with a charger catalogue. Match the charger mix to duty cycles, use smart charging to limit grid upgrades, and only then size the connection. That order avoids paying for capacity you never use and avoids discovering a grid constraint after the order is placed. We recommend beginning with a feasibility review so grant timing and DNO lead times are lined up before any commitments are made.
— Swift Charging
Get a feasibility review for your depot
Our team handles the route from initial feasibility through to ongoing management: feasibility review, site survey, grant application support, installation, smart charging and maintenance, with UK-wide coverage. Request a review or a quote and we will line your depot plan up with the Depot Charging Scheme windows. See our fleet EV charging solutions and get in touch today.
FAQ
Is depot charging the best option for electric HGVs?
For most fleets, yes. Depot charging is the most cost-effective and reliable way to power an electric fleet, and the IET guide expects 80–90% of charging to happen there. Public en-route charging then covers longer journeys.
How much grant funding is available for HGV depot charging?
The Depot Charging Scheme funds up to 70% of charge point and civil costs, capped at £1 million per organisation. It is one application per organisation, so plan your sites together.
What charger power do HGVs need at the depot?
It depends on the duty cycle. Rigids with long overnight dwell can use lower power, while double-shifted artics need high-power chargers, as the Truck charging and TCO study explains. A mixed charger fleet usually works best.
How do I find out if my depot has enough grid capacity?
Check your Agreed Supply Capacity using your meter reference, then book a DNO connection surgery. Smart charging and storage can often reduce how much reinforcement you need, according to eFREIGHT 2030.
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