Bidfood opens four-bay overhead EV charging gantry at Slough depot
A single 600kW Kempower charger serves four existing parking bays. The project was delivered by Scania group's Erinion with support from the Government's Depot Charging Scheme, and Bidfood says it will explore letting inbound suppliers use the bays.
Bidfood has opened a four-bay overhead charging gantry at its Slough depot, which the wholesaler believes to be the first of its kind at a UK commercial transport depot. The bays were unveiled at a ceremony on 20 October alongside one of Bidfood's new 18-tonne electric vehicles from Renault Trucks. Bidfood describes them as a milestone in its move towards alternative fuels and more electric vehicles in its fleet.
After receiving support from the Government's Depot Charging Scheme, Bidfood brought in infrastructure partner Erinion, part of the Scania group, to deliver the project earlier this year. Erinion managed the whole project, including the design and delivery of the cantilevered overhead gantry. Bidfood says this design allowed the infrastructure to be added without losing any parking spaces or disrupting day-to-day operations.
The system uses a 600kW Kempower charger to power four charging points across existing parking bays. Bidfood says the four-bay design is scalable and was designed with future fleet growth in mind.
Faye Reeve, Head of Non-Inventory Procurement at Bidfood's parent group Bidcorp UK, said: "We wanted a solution that works around the realities of a busy depot, without taking away valuable parking space or changing the ways our teams operate."
She added that the company would look at wider use of the site: "We also want the charging bays to have a wider benefit in the longer term, which is why we’ll be exploring the opportunities that there may be in the future for inbound suppliers to utilise the facilities."
Jack Smith, Country Manager UK at Erinion, said: "Opening the bays to inbound suppliers would turn a depot charger into shared infrastructure for the supply chain, and that improves the economics of the whole site. We designed the gantry and power set-up with that growth in mind."
Sources
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