The company’s innovative Power Island concept demonstrates how One Energy plans to configure electric semi-truck charging infrastructure to concurrently support multiple corporate trucking fleet operators.
The Findlay Megawatt Hub is the largest constructed or publicly announced truck charging site in the United States in terms of available charging capacity. The site power system can accommodate up to 30mW of charging in today’s configuration.
One Energy plans to utilise a radial charging set up to optimise overall site efficiency, allowing multiple corporate customers to customise charging operations and equipment to their specific fleet’s needs. The site currently has fully functional capacity at medium and low voltages. One Energy has developed patent-pending physical systems to optimise its radial truck charging configuration. It is also working with charging equipment manufacturers to be ready to deploy both multiplatform and OEM-specific charging.
“From its inception, the electric semi-industry had an obvious chicken and egg problem,” said Jereme Kent, CEO of One Energy. “Truck manufacturers and fleet operators need to be able to charge at scale before they can move forward with deploying electric trucks at scale. This Megawatt Hub configuration solves that problem. The power is already on-site, at the right voltage, and we can outfit and energise custom Power Island configurations with the necessary charging equipment in weeks or months, not years.”
The electric semi-truck manufacturing industry has stated that a serious impediment to customer adoption of electric fleets has been getting enough power at the correct voltage from the grid to allow customers to connect their chargers. One Energy designed this site to solve that problem by delivering charger-ready power at scale. A 138,000-volt transmission line serves the Findlay Megawatt Hub. The facility has the capacity to charge 90 trucks concurrently (based on a typical 300-kW charge rate). The company expects to obtain direct access to transmission service pricing to provide some of the lowest-cost energy available in the United States. In addition, the site design allows it to host behind-the-meter renewable energy generation from wind and solar as demand at the site matures.
The Findlay Megawatt Hub was built by One Energy with its own capital and without government subsidies or grants. The company received no utility incentives for the site. Thomas Lause, CFO of One Energy, explained, “Capital markets are good at building the second and third projects after the pilot has proven successful, but they have always struggled with underwriting the first one. Because we are confident in the solution and the technology, we decided not to wait. We just built it. Now we have a functioning site to show capital markets.”
Kent concluded, “We are throwing down a gauntlet to jumpstart the electric semi-industry. We have already built full-scale, cost-effective charging that can serve multiple end-users. We have done it in the manufacturing centre of the United States, where there are numerous local and regional truck routes. Now we are excited to see the electric semi manufacturers deliver.”
