EV Charging and Liquid Fuel Management
Integrating Electric Vehicle (EV) charging into liquid fuel management systems is a critical aspect of transitioning toward a more sustainable and efficient energy infrastructure. For organisations with their own fuelling facilities, the ability to handle both liquid fuels (e.g., petrol, diesel) and electric charging presents operational, financial and technical challenges but also offers significant opportunities.
It is unlikely liquid fuels will ever be replaced totally by electric vehicles, certainly not in the near future as both the generation of electricity and the distribution network will need significant long-term investment before all the UK’s energy needs could be fulfilled. In addition, current battery technologies mean that an all-electric solution is simply impractical in some industries.
Hybrid vehicles are a much more reliable and practical solution – if the site has sufficient capacity to charge the vehicle, the vehicles route, the vehicle is stationary for long enough to be charged and daily use pattern is known and there are unlikely to be changes, then an all-electric vehicle may be considered, but the real world isn’t like this.
Hybrid Vehicle Fuelling/Charging Infrastructure.
Most large fleet owners already recognise the advantages of having bulk fuel on their sites to fuel their fleet, so that infrastructure will, in most cases, already be in place. Use of a modern fuel management system is also common to control the fuel pumps offering security and management information.
The advantage of liquid fuelling is that the space around the pump is only used temporarily and once the vehicle is filled, the space is then available for the next user. Unfortunately, the length of time it takes to charge a vehicle, even with the very large chargers means that a parking space is required for an extended time which is a huge challenge on space limited sites.
It will normally be impractical to charge one vehicle after another in the same way that vehicles are fuelled at a pump, so it is inevitable that there will be more charge points than there are fuel pumps. The exact number will depend on the fleets operation. Worst case, where the fleet works all day, then stops all night would mean that a charge point for each vehicle will be required.
Jigsaw Fuel Management Systems have been designed to be able to control just about any pump on the market today, but also to integrate the control of EV charge points. A Jigsaw system can manage kWh as easily as it manages litres and both energy sources are displayed side by side on the Jigsaw fuel management web service giving a combined total of litres and power usage against each vehicle.
Unlike most of the charge point management software supplied with chargers, the Jigsaw system doesn’t just log the amount of power used to charge a vehicle, but also the time it takes, so we will be able to give you information on the fastest battery technologies and, possibly more importantly, how the battery capacity fades over time and how many miles you get from the kWh used.
Jigsaw are also building dedicated charge point controllers. Our new VoltsPoint controller can manage up to 16 “dumb” charge points, but still send the information to our on line Fuel web service.
The Jigsaw Fuel Management System offers a unified platform that oversees both liquid fuel and EV charging infrastructure and allows for better real-time monitoring of energy consumption. Jigsaw can interface with most EV chargers as easily as we interface to fuel pumps. Jigsaw already manage most of the CNG/LNG in the UK through our systems and HVO/BioDiesel is just another liquid fuel to us, so whatever the future, a Jigsaw Fuel Management will be ready to fuel it.
