Fleet Electrification At Scale With ABB
Aug 12, 2022
While New Zealand’s uptake of electric vehicles for private use has been impressive, acceleration of E-mobility in this country at least for the next few years will be driven primarily by corporate vehicle fleet electrification and with that comes significant project management considerations.
While home chargers and public charging infrastructure is well geared to private users, to ensure ongoing, scalable EV utilisation and business continuity corporates need to look at their own assets and infrastructure. As a global leader in industrial technology and electrification, ABB has deployed high power EV charging systems for more than a decade. ABB New Zealand’s e-Mobility Product Marketing Manager, Debbie Van Der Schyff has been at the leading edge of the technology for that time.
Debbie lives and breathes e-mobility technology, starting her career with the ABB South Africa in 1997 and working across Industrial Automation, Smart Home Systems and Uninterruptable Power Supply solutions gaining insights from all around the world.
Settling here in 2009, Debbie now assists businesses with charging solutions for EV technology and seeing New Zealand’s eagerness to adopt electric vehicles gives her a great sense of pride know here work is contributing to a better environment for the next generation.
“From ABB’s unique position globally, and with a lot of lessons learned, we can offer corporates looking at transitioning to an electrified fleet insights for ensuring safety, intelligence, and long-term optimization for charging deployments in New Zealand.” Says Van Der Schyff.
Settling here in 2009, Debbie now assists businesses with charging solutions for EV technology and seeing New Zealand’s eagerness to adopt electric vehicles gives her a great sense of pride know here work is contributing to a better environment for the next generation.
“From ABB’s unique position globally, and with a lot of lessons learned, we can offer corporates looking at transitioning to an electrified fleet insights for ensuring safety, intelligence, and long-term optimization for charging deployments in New Zealand.” Says Van Der Schyff.
Safety:
EV charging places high power into everyone’s hands, so safety is always paramount and it starts with those who install, commission and service the equipment. Projects need to make provisions for qualified service engineers and annual preventative maintenance. Ensuring the correct safety standards such as UL, NEC, ISO and more is also vital and equipment designs resilient to moisture and humidity, animals and vandalism, with electrical safety disconnects and tamper proof circuit breakers is also a critical consideration.
Smart connectivity:
Debbie says investing in the most intelligent and connected charging equipment has many commercial and administrative benefits. Smarter energy management, can significantly reduce utility demand fees and ensuring the capacity required on site is always in line with local guidelines, like WorkSafe. Load management will assist with site planning to optimize the site power during off peak times. ABB’s sequential charging solutions improves cost of asset ownership with a single device able to deliver power to multiple charge points sequentially over time, often overnight or during scheduled breaks. Meanwhile their interoperable back-office integration – OCPP offers an industry accepted protocol with smart charging functionality to enable managed charging programs that accomplish load balancing while incentivizing lower energy costs for infrastructure owners.
Smart infrastructures also allow asset health monitoring – It’s essential that charging systems be monitored from anywhere, so they must be connected. Analytics from the data streams allow remote intervention, with up to 80% of faults addressed without service personnel dispatched to site.
Build partnerships early and often:
Finding trusted partners and tapping into the experience will also be advantageous to a business considering their own charging infrastructure.
“Engineering and design firms familiar with the complexities of siting for variables like cable reach and vehicle movement scenarios is invaluable during project planning,” Says Debbie,
“And of course, infrastructure companies with proven technology and extensive field experience will also be valuable consultants, whether addressing high power electrification equipment, future-proofing strategies or optimizing the user experience.”
Stay ahead of the curve:
“EV charging technology continues to advance with functionality like energy storage, islanding and remote management built into chargers and facilities. It’s important for fleet owners, contractors, and suppliers to plan ahead, leverage industry standards and build best practices,” advises Debbie.
With the right partners, planning and assets, the transition to E-Mobility at scale can be made seamlessly no matter what business you’re in.