eYardPlanner

Optimize resource allocation to maximize your e-trucks’ on-road time

Mitigate project risks
Reduce costs
Understand your electricity requirements

Are you transitioning to electric trucks and uncertain about how to charge them? Our e-truck software helps you to plan what chargers you need, starting with your schedule. We can help you understand your long term charger and utility needs, and plan your next steps most efficiently. Optimize your transition to zero emission e-trucks with our eYardPlanner. Book a demo or get in contact for more information.

transformers at a substationA blue truck plugged in and charging

Charge Smart

The eYardPlanner software empowers you to establish your electrification strategy for the (near) future. As you electrify more trucks, getting the most out of your equipment is important. ChargeSim can help you explore trade offs between operational costs like electricity costs, including demand and time of use charges, labor costs for vehicle movements and capital costs of chargers and utility upgrades. 

A laptop running chargesim

Key Features

Vehicle Modelling

  • Easily configurable Battery Models including end of charge power drop
  • Vehicle size, color, battery, maximum current/voltage/power
  • Charger Maximum power / current / voltage including multi-module and multi-output chargers
  • Vehicle Refrigeration loads
  • Vehicle and Charger standby power and efficiency losses

Schedule Upload & Manipulation

  • .xlsx upload and generation tools
  • Visualize, filter, manipulate schedules
  • Support multiple charging locations to evaluate on-route charging.
  • Configurable linked assignments (e.g. vehicle which does block A must do block B)

Workflow and Parking

  • Lane parking positions and blocking-in evaluated
  • Multiple vehicle types and sizes supported
  • Scheduled parking assignments
  • Flexible configuration for parking rules

Charge Management

  • Connect to external smart charging tools via OCPP*
  • Configurable built-in Charge Management algorithms
  • Electricity tariff evaluation
  • Automatic or manual vehicle assignment
  • Options to minimise charging during peak periods

Solar & Energy Storage*

  • Upload solar profiles to include in analysis
  • Configurable energy storage systems and control algorithms
  • Energy-Source aware charge management algorithms
  • Automatic peak shaving

Reporting and Analysis

  • Generate summary reports in .docx, download raw data in .csv and .xls
  • Quickly generate presentation-quality plots
  • Powerful comparison tools
  • Recommendation engine to proposes design improvements

* using optional software module

A truck charging from solar and wind power

ChargeSim is a simulation tool that can evaluate hundreds of vehicles, thousands of trips, and elaborate parking and workflow configurations. In-depth modeling captures complex behaviors.

We believe addressing climate change requires economically viable technology solutions which can enable a comparable quality of life for everyone, so they can be deployed at scale. Our tools contribute to this goal by lowering costs of electrification and improving smart charging 

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Frequently asked questions

What kind of charging strategies are used for electric trucks?

There are a few strategies which can be used, in practice the right mix will depend on your fleet and how you use it.

Overnight charging: charging with relatively low power DC chargers during the night in roughly 8 to 14 hours. For urban last mile delivery running a single shift this can often be sufficient, but it is important to plan enough charging power to take advantage of cheaper electricity rate periods.

Destination Charging: Charge the vehicles at their destination like warehouses or logistic centers. Here it’s a balance to find optimal charging during loading and unloading (30 to 120 minutes depending on the goods shipped)

On-Route Fast charging: Charging at highway rest stops during driver break periods using very high power chargers with MCS (Megawatt Charging System). These chargers and stations are starting to be built, but are still rare. This is most useful for long-haul transport.

How does your software enable me to save money?

It is important to know your energy demand prior to construction of a project. By calculating the power requirements upfront, you can get the right utility capacity. Avoid having too little power, and not being able to charge, or wasting time and money on unnecessary capacity.

Electricity grid capacity is becoming increasingly scarce in many markets, so being able to fit your operation within a smaller available capacity can often mean further electricity grid construction isn't required, saving considerable costs and project delays.

With a big fleet coming and going it is a difficult puzzle to find the best setup for your needs. In our software you can load your transport schedule, energy prices and solar profiles to find clear insights in your requirements and potential savings.

Our visualizations and reporting help you quickly understand the tradeoffs and find the lowest cost solution for you.

How much time does a simulation take?

For planning simulations, typically a few minutes.

For OCPP simulations it will depend on the backoffice and how fast you can accelerate the operation. Depending on your backoffice setup accelerated operation may require some adaptations since the OCPP protocol is only designed for real-time use. (e.g. 1kWh will be delivered in under 1h in accelerated mode, but if the backoffice cross checks this it could cause a warning.)

In real time mode it will take as long as you intend to simulate.

How can I download the simulation results?

The results can be downloaded in various formats such as .csv, .xlsx ,.docx, .png, .svg and .jpg depending on the data. You can generate full summary reports for simulations in .docx format and download most raw data in .xlsx

Does ChargeSim do real time charger control?

No, ChargeSim is purely a design and testing tool. Our planing tools are usually used before chargers are purchased to select the most suitable setup and are vendor agnostic. They can be used to help improve workflows and smart charging of existing sites. Our OCPP tools can be used to test, validate, demonstrate and train people on smart charging software that will later control the actual chargers. We don’t make software for day-to-day operation of depots and smart charging. There are several vendors who do, and our tools can help you get an unbiased view on the value they can add.

We would like to charge our vehicles in multiple locations, can the software handle such a setup?

Our software supports multi-site operation. Simulations can have vehicles scheduled to charge at many different locations, such as a depot and transit exchanges.

How do I import schedule data into ChargeSim?

We can use a proprietary excel format, or GTFS which is often available publicly from agencies. Other formats like KV1 and VDV452 are supported. These schedules can also help with planning on-route charging.

How many vehicles can we simulate in the software?

This depends on your subscription, our subscription tiers scale with the number of vehicles. We can simulate hundreds of vehicles.