Fleets manage charging schedules by deciding, in advance, who charges when: start times are staggered so the site’s supply is never asked for everything at once, vehicles are ranked by departure time and by how much energy tomorrow’s route needs, and the whole plan is held inside a site limit. At scale, software works the plan minute by minute. In a small fleet, the same discipline runs on a rota and a whiteboard.
Key Takeaways
- A schedule staggers starts and ranks vehicles by departure time and route energy need.
- The site’s designed ceiling is fixed; scheduling is how the fleet lives inside it.
- Platforms automate the ranking at scale; small fleets run the same logic as a rota.
- EVDANCE hardware exposes OCPP 1.6J for a platform to work through; it is not itself a platform.
The Problem a Schedule Solves
Left alone, a fleet’s charging demand has a brutal shape. Every vehicle returns in the same hour, every driver plugs in, and every charger asks for full power at once: a sharp peak at 6 p.m., then hours of nearly finished batteries sipping nothing. The building’s supply, though, is a fixed ceiling set by the installation. A schedule is how a fleet lives inside that ceiling without leaving range on the table: spread the starts, feed the urgent first, and let the site’s spare hours do quiet work. The same peak-shaving logic drives smart charging against time-of-use tariffs for home drivers; a depot runs it against a departure board instead of a price clock.
The Three Moves Every Schedule Makes
| Move | What it does | The data it needs |
|---|---|---|
| Stagger the starts | Vehicles begin at different times across the evening instead of all at plug-in, flattening the site’s peak | When each vehicle returns and how long it dwells |
| Rank by departure | The 5 a.m. vehicle is guaranteed its energy before the 9 a.m. one is topped up | Tomorrow’s departure order, from the dispatch plan |
| Rank by route need | A van with a long route tomorrow outranks a pool car with a short one, whatever the clock says | Energy per route, from telematics or dispatch records |
| Hold the ceiling | Total site output is capped at the level the installation was designed for; vehicles share what is under it | The site’s designed capacity, set at installation |
Software at Scale, a Rota at Small Scale
A fleet charging platform is the category of software that runs this continuously: it reads departure plans and session data, then sets each charger’s output through the charger’s control interface as the night unfolds and plans change. It earns its place when the fleet is large enough that the ranking changes daily, vehicles swap bays, and exceptions arrive faster than a person can re-plan.
Small fleets run the manual end of the same spectrum, and it works: a fixed rota that says which vehicles charge on which nights, charger currents set once to share the supply, and one named person who moves a vehicle when the rota breaks. Our overview of wallbox scheduling and load management features shows the same controls at single-charger scale. The method is identical; only the bookkeeping changes hands.
Where EVDANCE Hardware Sits in a Schedule
Plainly: EVDANCE sells charging hardware, not a scheduling platform. What its fleet hardware offers a schedule is the control line a platform works through. The EV-AC03201T dual-connector station (two Type 2 connectors, up to 43 kW shared, RFID, IP54) and the EV-RHDC30K-L compact DC charger (22 kW DC, IP54) both state OCPP 1.6J, the standard interface through which an operator’s chosen platform sets output and collects sessions. The scheduling decisions live in that platform and in the fleet’s own rules; depot planning starts at our commercial charging page.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can scheduling avoid a bigger electrical supply?
It reduces the power a site needs at any one moment, which is what supply sizing is based on, so it can shrink or delay an upgrade. Whether it avoids one in your depot is a design question; the sizing method in our depot AC sizing guide is where that gets worked out.
What happens when a vehicle returns late?
A platform re-ranks automatically: the late vehicle takes priority and lower-ranked vehicles slow down. On a manual rota, the rule has to exist in advance, usually that the late vehicle takes the fastest point and the dispatcher is told.
Do schedules save money, or just capacity?
Both are possible, by different mechanisms. Holding the ceiling saves capacity. Shifting charging into cheaper hours saves money where the tariff rewards it, which is a tariff question; the depot’s own bill is the document that answers it.
Related Reading
- Smart Charging and Time-of-Use Tariffs: How Scheduling Cuts EV Charging Costs
- Wallbox Home Charger Features Explained: Display, Scheduling, and Load Management
- Fleet Depot Charging: How to Size AC Chargers for Vans and Light Commercial Vehicles
- How to Plan a Workplace EV Charging Program
