BELLE Depot electrification - charging infrastructure and load management in practical trials

BELLE is the first project to pursue an electrification strategy for heavy-duty vehicle depots; given its novel nature and complexity, this approach presents various challenges, such as:  

• Ensuring multi-shift operation and the operational readiness of vehicles at all times  
• Impact on grid connection and management of charging requirements for potentially growing fleets of electric commercial vehicles
• Cost-effective deployment of electric trucks in municipal and commercial contexts  

To address these challenges, BELLE employs an electrical engineering, economic, and operational analysis of charging infrastructure deployment at depots.

To this end, the project implements charging infrastructure into operational workflows at depots across two deployment contexts and draws conclusions for other sectors based on insights gained during the demonstration phase.

The goal is therefore to define key abstract factors for the evaluation and suitability assessment of a site’s electrification and to validate these through practical application and stakeholder engagement. Furthermore, the overarching insights from the project partners of the overall initiative are consolidated, and the key factors are translated into a transferable concept. 

hysolutions assumes the role of project coordinator and ensures the transferability of the results to other use cases. To this end, close coordination takes place within the partner group and with other practitioners.