2040 isn’t that far away. Sixteen years if your mental arithmetic is up to speed. That’s the year when sales of new diesel trucks come to an end. Right now, not only is the industry wondering how it’s going to meet the cost of decarbonising, there’s also an even bigger worry – a lack of capacity in the electricity grid to fuel all the trucks.
The simple fact is, industrial estates and business parks where most depots, service centres and dealerships were based, weren’t built with any thought to the high-power demands required to recharge an HGV battery. To put it into perspective, an electric truck requires 50 times more power than is used to charge an average car or van. Not only will this shortfall cause delays in the electricification of fleets, it will add to costs.
One potential lower cost solution is a BESS – a battery energy storage system. A BESS is a reservoir for electricity. It enables storage of electricity generated by solar and wind power which can then be released when large amounts of energy is required to refuel, for instance, an HGV. Many types of BESS are available to suit particular needs – including lithium-ion batteries, lead acid batteries, flow batteries and flywheels.
Answering the industry’s decarbonisation challenge is going to be complicated. But a BESS charged by renewables could be part of the solution – a low cost and low carbon route to support truck electrification, ensuring depots and service centres get the energy they need at the most affordable price.