At the charge point
MANTARAY and EEL handle the OCPP communications and IEC 61851 power control at the charge point itself, so it's already speaking to your back office and ready for fleet identification.
Applications · Fleet & Depot
Fleet and depot charging, built to handle the load
A fleet depot has to get every vehicle charged in the same overnight window, usually on a fixed electrical supply that was never sized for 20 or 200 vehicles plugging in at once.
If you're a charge point manufacturer, CPO or systems integrator building hardware for this environment, the brief is different from public or workplace charging. You're designing for a predictable, high-density load, for a customer who cannot afford a vehicle that isn't charged by 6am.
We build the electronics, firmware and load management that go inside fleet chargers, not the complete charger itself, so you can bring a reliable product to market without starting from a blank sheet of paper.
Depot charging asks more of your hardware than public charging does
A fleet returning at the end of a shift wants to plug in at once, not spread across the day, and without load management that spike hits your customer's energy bill immediately.
Most depots also weren't built with vehicle charging in mind. A grid upgrade can take a year or more to arrange with the DNO, so the hardware has to work within whatever capacity is already there.
And uptime isn't optional the way it might be elsewhere. A failed charger in a public car park is an inconvenience. A failed charger at a depot can mean a van doesn't go out on its round.
This is the same problem we cover, at a different scale, in our piece on scaling from pilot to 1,000 chargers, applied to a site where every charger switches on at once rather than trickling in through the day.
The hardware and software that make a charger depot-ready
Local load balancing
LinkRay is a subscription-free local load balancer that dynamically shares available power across up to 100 chargers, so a depot with a fixed supply can run more vehicles than a one-charger-one-circuit design would allow. It keeps balancing even during a network outage, so a dropped Wi-Fi signal doesn't take the chargers down with it.
Whole-site coordination
Where a depot has multiple meters or transformers, or shares its supply with warehouse loads, SiteManager sits above LinkRay to coordinate power distribution across up to 64 LinkRay units on that site.
Identification
Our OCPP and ISO 15118 software support Plug and Charge, so a returning vehicle can identify itself and start charging without a driver fumbling for an RFID card at 5am.
Proven under real grid constraints
On the ES Plus project, LinkRay balanced load dynamically across more than 100 chargers on a single grid-constrained site, with solar-aware charging prioritising on-site generation. Peak grid draw dropped by 40%, enough to meet local regulatory requirements without an expensive grid upgrade.
We're an active member of BEAMA, the UK trade association for energy infrastructure manufacturers, and our OCPP implementation has been tested at Open Charge Alliance plugfests.
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Ready to talk about your depot project?
If your build needs something bespoke, our consultancy and NRE services can take on the parts your team doesn't have the bandwidth for. Share your vehicle count, site constraints and rollout timeline, and we'll tell you whether LinkRay alone covers it or whether you need SiteManager on top, before you commit to a hardware spec.
Tell us what you're building and our engineers will help you scope the fastest, lowest-risk route to market. A conversation directly with the people who design the charging modules.
FAQs
Frequently asked questions
What is dynamic load management in fleet depot charging?
Dynamic load management shares the power available at a site across every connected charger in real time, rather than giving each charger a fixed maximum. At a depot, that lets more vehicles charge from a limited electrical supply without tripping a breaker or breaching the site's demand limit.
Does fleet depot charging require OCPP?
Not strictly, but it's the standard your hardware should support. OCPP lets chargers talk to a back office and to load management software from other vendors, so the depot isn't locked into a single supplier's ecosystem.
What happens to load management if the internet connection drops?
With LinkRay, nothing changes at the charger. It balances load locally, so a lost network connection doesn't stop it protecting the site's electrical supply, only remote monitoring is affected until connectivity returns.
How many chargers can one load management system control?
A single LinkRay unit manages up to 100 chargers. For larger sites with multiple meters or transformers, SiteManager coordinates up to 64 LinkRay units within that one site.
Does depot charging need ISO 15118 and Plug and Charge?
It isn't required, but it's useful where the same vehicles return to the same bays every night. ISO 15118 lets a vehicle identify itself automatically, so a driver doesn't need to tap an RFID card at 5am and the depot gets a clean, fleet-linked charging record.
Is fleet depot charging the same as V2G?
No. Depot load management controls how power is shared across chargers as vehicles charge. V2G lets energy flow back out of the vehicle battery, a separate capability that isn't yet part of most depot deployments.