Kelling Group – Workplace Case Study

Our commercial team created a bespoke workplace EV charging solution for Kelling Group, West Yorkshire – the UK’s leading national provider of vehicle-mounted access platforms and mobile eco-welfare units.

From initial contact to handover, We Power Your Car coordinated the full EV charging journey for Kelling Group, including grant support, charger choice and installation, in addition to providing and configuring the back-office system.

Kelling Group Workplace EV Charger Installation Overview:

Initial enquiry

After making contact with our commercial team, Kelling Group provided a brief overview of their EV charging requirements:

• Eight new electric vehicle chargers and one upgraded EV charger for workplace charging
• Simple, tidy, easy-to-use socketed EV charging units
• The ability to set different tariffs for different users with the back-office management system.

Site Survey

After the first contact, we undertook a free face-to-face site survey at Kelling Group’s Headquarters to obtain a comprehensive overview of the company’s charging needs.

After a thorough audit of the proposed site, and a deeper discussion surrounding EV charging requirements, we created a proposal document.

Within this proposal, we included a personalised design and installation walk-through, including but not limited to grant eligibility, back-office solutions, and manufacturer selection.

Our bespoke solution for Kelling Group included:

The design:

Kelling Group wanted tidy, easy-to-use socketed EV charging points. And that’s exactly what we supplied and installed.

The charge points: Easee Charge

In total, we installed nine 22kW Easee Charges – here’s why:

As socketed (untethered) chargers, the Easee charging robots present a clean and compact solution without cables in view. To further add to the sleek, professional aesthetic, we took advantage of the Easee bases, ensuring efficient use of parking space by installing multiple Easee Charge units on individual bases.

Moreover, by offering socketed units, users are able to plug in their own EV charging cables for a universal charging solution.

Up to 101 charging robots can also be load balanced on a single fuse with the Easee Charge, protecting businesses and offering scalability. For Kelling, this load balancing proved essential as we could put four chargers on one 22kW circuit, sharing the load across the chargers equally and safely. As a result, if and when all electric car chargers are in use, each vehicle will receive 5.5kW, which, over an 8-hour workday, provides approximately 176 miles of charge.

Furthermore, the Easee Charge offers RFID compatibility for effortless charger control. For Kelling Group, employees were supplied with Easee-compatible RFID tags to start and stop their charging sessions. On the other hand, visitors utilise the QR code located on the outside of the EV charging point body to manage sessions. Ease of use is therefore guaranteed for authorised personnel with these intuitive scan-activated RFID and QR charging methods.

The back-office solution:

Kelling Group wanted a back-office solution that provided management information to support environmental reporting and functionality for managing access. Moreover, they wanted to set different charging tariffs for different categories of users.

We catered to Kelling’s requirements by offering Fuuse back-end office solution. This market-leading system allows complete management of the unit, including the ability to restrict users, manage billing, and control tariffs.

With this intelligent back-end system, Kelling Group received the freedom to charge users for electricity while setting user-specific tariffs, for example, offering free charging sessions to visitors.

Grant funding:

As Office for Zero Emission Vehicles (OZEV) approved installers offering government-approved electric vehicle charging points, we help guide you through the Workplace Charging Scheme grant and the EV chargepoint infrastructure grant applications. And that’s what we did with Kelling Group.

The Workplace Charging Scheme offers £350 off the cost of workplace or commercial electric vehicle chargers, up to a maximum of £14,000. Additionally, the EV chargepoint infrastructure for staff and fleets allows up to £500 per EV charger infrastructure space, totalling up to an additional £15,000 of government funding available.

Kelling Group was eligible for both the WCS and the EV chargepoint infrastructure grant, obtaining a significant amount of government funding towards their workplace installation.

Installation:

After Kelling approved the quotation, our commercial team arranged a date to start the installation.

The installation took approximately two days, with groundworks and electrical work being undertaken on the first day and installation of the EV charging points, testing and commissioning on the second day.

• Groundworks included: digging trenches, laying cable ducting, backfilling the trenches, installing the Easee posts and laying tarmac.
• Electrical work included: the installation of the new distribution board for the employee car park chargers, installing the new MCB in the new building distribution board, MATT: E O-PEN protection device.

Challenges and solutions:

While on the site survey, our commercial team noted that there was not enough power supply in any existing distribution boards to power all nine EV chargers.

Our solution to this was to split the supply into two, minimising groundworks and the cable run for Kelling. In turn, providing a cheaper and more efficient solution for the company.

However, while the first supply came from a distribution board in a newly built extension, the other distribution board lacked the capacity to power the remaining four chargers in the employee car park. Our commercial team overcame this obstacle by installing a new MCCB in the mains incoming board to power a new 12-way distribution board with built-in PEN protection and surge protection.

By offering this solution, we enabled power for the four new EV chargers while simultaneously futureproofing the property – as this new distribution board will be able to power more chargers when needed.

Handover:

As part of our handover, our commercial team attended Kelling’s HQ to demonstrate how their new EV chargers worked – including showcasing the Easee Charge features and functionality. We also configured the FUUSE back-office system and trained Kelling on how to set payment parameters, assign RFID cards for users and view charging analytics.

Matthew Jowett, CFO of Kelling Group, said:

“We are delighted with the installation by We Power Your Car. From a thorough and collaborative specification process to determine our exact requirements through to a tidy and professional installation phase, the team kept us up to date throughout the entire project. This installation is primarily to facilitate the electrification of our company car fleet and staff’s personal vehicles. We have already placed a second order with We Power Your Car to coincide with a number of other ‘green’ initiatives within our business, including the launch of Access Zero, the UK’s first fully-electric van-mounted access platforms.”

CONCLUSION

By installing workplace electric car chargers, Kelling will reap the rewards from the start. Not only will they boost staff morale by offering employees the opportunity to charge during work hours at a subsidised rate – benefiting staff retention – but Kelling will improve their sustainability credentials while also futureproofing the business.

As an accredited, experienced electric vehicle charger, full-service supply and installation company, we can assist with every step of organising an EV charging solution, including but not limited to the following:

• Office and workplace spaces
• Staff and fleet car parks
• Commercial buildings
• Hotels/Small accommodation businesses (B&Bs)
• Domestic properties
• New builds
• Apartment blocks
• Retail complexes
• Public car parks

Call us today on 03333 44 00 16 or get in contact to discuss your commercial or workplace EV charging needs.