Guide
Fleet electrification usually stalls at the service upgrade, not at the charger. A battery gets around it.
A site adding electric vans has vehicles and a charger specification, but rarely the incoming capacity to support charging them simultaneously. The utility upgrade is a long lead-time item and a capital project — and on a leased or temporary site it may never be worth doing at all.
The result is fleets that have bought vehicles they cannot conveniently charge, which is a poor place to be twelve months into an electrification programme.
A battery decouples the rate energy enters the site from the rate it goes into a vehicle. The pack charges slowly from whatever supply exists — or from solar, or from a generator — and then delivers charging power at the rate the vehicle needs.
Because the site draws a low, steady current rather than a charging spike, the peak demand the meter records does not rise. That avoids both the capacity upgrade and the demand charge that charging would otherwise create.
The honest answer is arithmetic, not marketing. A 30 kWh pack holds roughly 24 kWh usable after the state-of-charge reserve, minus conversion losses. If a van needs 20 kWh to get through a shift, that is roughly one van per full pack before the battery itself needs recharging.
Which is why mobile EV charging is usually specified alongside a recharge arrangement — overnight from the existing supply, or from solar — rather than as a standalone energy source. The battery is buffering, not generating.
| Grid upgrade | Battery buffered | |
|---|---|---|
| Lead time | Months to years | Immediate |
| Capital cost | High, fixed to the site | Lower, asset is mobile |
| Peak demand | Rises with charging | Unchanged |
| Demand charges | Increase | Avoided |
| Works off-grid | No | Yes, with solar or generator |
| Moves with the fleet | No | Yes |
| Cost per kWh long term | Lower | Higher |
Questions answered
Delivering charging power from a movable source — typically a battery energy storage system on a trailer — rather than from fixed infrastructure connected to the grid at that location.
Yes, sequentially, within the energy stored. A 30 kWh pack delivers roughly 24 kWh usable, so the number of vehicles depends on how much charge each one needs.
No. The battery can be recharged from any available supply, from a generator, or from solar. Off-grid charging is one of the main reasons sites choose battery buffering.
They solve different problems. A grid connection is cheaper per kWh once it exists; a battery avoids the upgrade, the lead time and the demand charges, and can move.
Get in touch
Tell us the site, the load and the runtime you need. Our Austin engineering team comes back with a configuration, a runtime estimate and a price.
+1 512-316-7347
info@pulsar.industries
WhatsApp +1 512-585-8293
