[i-s]

I work for an american corporation with two manufacturing sites in the UK - one near Glasgow and one near Manchester.

At the manchester site we have a 2x22kW Rolec charger with token "payment" mechanism (we have to go and buy tokens from finance to activate the charger). The glasgow site is currently in the process of installing a 2x22kW Chargemaster Fastcharge point, which will have some smart features - it can be activated by RFID, but I believe it will also work through an app potentially (ie through the polar app, and use the Chargevision management system).

We are also looking at possible expansion of charging provision at Manchester, as there are now 6 BEVs and 3 PHEVs among staff and this number is liable to grow quite quickly.

I have enquired with Rolec as to whether the coin-op mechanism can be replaced with a smart feature but this is not possible - the entire 2x22kW floorstanding unit would have to be replaced which strikes me as wasteful, both financially and why junk a perfectly decent unit? So, leaving that unit aside, I'm considering the future expansion and trying to achieve commonality of fee structure, method, etc with the glasgow site and enable inter-operation (ie employee from either site can visit and utilise the other site's chargers in the same way).

I guess the easiest way to do that is to install BP Chargemaster units and run everything through Polar App and manage it through Chargevision (allowing finance to track each user's consumption and bill them, or whatever they decide to do)? Does anyone have experience of managing a workplace, especially multiple sites, this way?

The next thought is whether there is some sort of simple platform that we can run on one of our web servers that can provide this sort of functionality across different brands of chargers so long as all use OCPP. In other words, if we have OCPP compliant connected chargers wherever, is there an independent management platform that we can run on our own server that can provide a unified user app, charge enable, logging, etc? That way then we are not beholden to the future of any given charging provider nor any ongoing management platform fees should they apply?

Any experiences or knowledge gratefully received!

 

[starquake]

From a work place I use with multiple sites, they've gone Polar. You could build your own platform, but then that also comes with problems on handing out cars/apps etc. Polar also has advantage you can bill third parties using your private network if they have their own "non company" Polar cards. Site I use allows contractors like myself to have a personal polar card, and charge at the office facilities. I know a few councils locally (from friends there) also use private polar posts for much same reason (allowing them to bill staff).

Something to consider is dwell time, ^ largest office is looking to expand to 100+(maybe 200) posts, but all at 16A. Why? Most people are there 7+ horus on average, and the issue is more the number of chargers for staff with EV's now NOT the speed of those, even with 30 today, there is an internal company messager to swap cars on charge at lunchtime. They've found the 22Kwh units less use, given you can technically have 6 posts off the same supply at 7kwh (32A), or 12 at 16A... site is considering a "single" 50kw for visitors on CCS/Chademo though..

 

[starquake]

Hence me having a polar card both from choice and necessity in order to be able to charge in office.