During the day while the delivery vehicles are out on the road, the PV panels generate power from the sun. Energy builds up in the storage system ready to charge the vehicles when they return to site and are parked for the night. If required, some of the self-generated power can be used for the site’s building to reduce the amount of electricity the site needs to buy during peak demand hours. This is cost-effective and helps reduce the strain on the French electricity grid, too.

Digitalisation is key to effective renewable energy management. La Poste’s pilot project is based on an intelligent algorithm that manages the energy flows and controls the microgrid without any need for human intervention. The drivers just park up the delivery vehicles to be charged during the night, and the EVs are ready to go the next morning with a full battery for the day ahead.

The results are impressive. Charging for the delivery vehicles has been integrated into the site, via the solar canopies and the building, without increasing the site’s consumption of electricity from external sources. Effective self-consumption of self-generated power provides up to 80 per cent of the electricity needed to power the delivery vehicles during the Summer months when the solar canopies are most productive.

This demonstration project is a useful model. It makes it possible to calculate that if the entire fleet of La Poste’s 7,000 electric cars were to benefit from the same approach to EV charging, it would represent 5,593,000 kWh of renewable PV electricity produced annually for 16,954,000 solar km traveled. This would prevent the emission of the 112.98 tons of carbon dioxide that would result if the same number of EVs were powered solely by the French electricity grid. 

Read our case study to understand the model and the benefits:

• Discover how an installation that combines PV power generation, energy storage, EV charging, and power supply to a building demonstrates how La Poste can minimise the impact of EV charging on the public electricity grid.
• Learn how La Poste can use existing technologies to transform its vehicle fleet, maximise the use of zero-carbon energy and reduce carbon emissions from its sites, without any disruption to existing activities.
• Gain insights into the return on investment of this approach to EV charging.