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Key Takeaways:
- Tailor charging solutions for heavy-duty trucks at stops and depots
- Modular and standard component choices are key to scalability
- Optimize charging for local and grid resiliency, and utility engagement
The principles of cause and effect have deep roots in scientific exploration, ancient philosophy, and religious teachings, and later, reflecting humanity’s attempts to understand and explain the world’s workings throughout history. Modular microgrids with optimal charging infrastructure is one such effect that can accelerate economic and environmental benefits from truck electrification. In support of truck electrification, this article focuses on modular deployment of charging infrastructure for trucks and related microgrids.
As the authors — Rish Ghatikar and Michael Barnard, experts in sustainability, transportation, and strategy — explored in their diagnosis of the challenges of truck charging, there are overlapping concerns which can heavily slow down deployment of megawatt-scale charging solutions to accelerate truck electrification. That led to the simplifying policy of depot and truck stop microgrids with solar, battery storage, power management, and charging systems. The set of self-reinforcing actions in the strategy started with incrementally larger capacity microgrids at sites over time, leveraging the pricing flexibility that a microgrid with solar and batteries provides for competitive advantage and sticking to the knitting of getting electricity into freight trucks. Another key requirement is modularity of the components, which enables incremental expansion of capacity in recharging microgrids without ripping and replacement big parts of the solution.
In Bent Flyvbjerg’s book How Big Things Get Done, the book that topped business book charts in 2023, he and co-author Dan Gardner in chapter nine asks What’s Your Lego? The concept for success encapsulated in this is modularity, repeatability, and manufacturability. It’s a core design concept for the electric truck charging transformation over the coming decades.
To effectively support microgrid-centric charging infrastructure for HD trucks, infrastructure must be modularized and designed to incrementally meet low or high charging requirements and align with freight operations. Trucks need megawatt charging to minimize downtime, particularly at truck stops.
As noted in the earlier article related to the diagnosis of truck charging realities in the United States, depot charging and truck stop charging have different charging levels and hence energy usage patterns and technologies.
For truck stops, megawatt charging is required. An initial microgrid with two-megawatt chargers, battery buffering, and some rooftop and canopy solar would suffice for initial volumes of trucks, and as per the design point for incrementalism, more capacity can be added in carefully designed increments. For depots which house fleets of trucks, lower levels of charging for longer periods overnight typically suffice, but for all but small fleets will still require microgrids with buffering batteries and rooftop solar.
The first article on actions recommended starting with small-size microgrids with lower investment and electrical supply needs and then incrementing them as the full fleet electrification requires procuring larger grid connection permits and time frames, more chargers, increased local generation capacities, demand flexibility, etc.
One key point regarding this is that several of the technologies are essentially LEGO pieces. Batteries and solar panels are among the most modular manufacturable items we use in our economy today. Megawatt-scale chargers are modular as well and can be added incrementally as charging demands increase, something explored more fully in the first article on incrementally adding charging capacity to microgrids. However, megawatt charging isn’t standardized yet, so expect some change management to occur with related costs in the first few years.
A challenge that the target audiences for this material must also consider is that at present, transformers and converters aren’t as modular and are constrained in supply.
Transformers, which step the power from the grid up or down to the required levels, and converters, which shift the power between alternating and direct currents, currently face three challenges in the US. The first is that legacy manufacturers such Hitachi and Virginia Transformer build them to specifications for the site. This slows the process, as each unit is generally subject to a complete engineering, design, and quality assurance process instead of being manufactured on an assembly line.
The second problem is that as with many other industrial products, factories for them have mostly left the US, and China dominates the market. Hitachi, to deal with this, has a strategy of having smaller factories in many countries, not just China, so it can provide the technologies to the US without concern of tariffs or the — frequently expressed and unwarranted — fears of cybersecurity risks.
The third problem is that everyone in the world is buying transformers and converters as the world electrifies transportation, heating, and industry, and builds vast quantities of wind and solar energy. There’s a shortage, and in some cases where big grid connections are required, sometimes getting the power management components can take almost as long as getting the grid connection itself.
Firms like Florida-based AmePower, which currently services and maintains transformers and converters from multiple vendors in the United States, are attempting to resolve this with modular, manufacturable units which are software configurable to perform both transformer and converter duties, and can be combined in serial or parallel depending on the power and energy requirements. They intend to build them in the United States for the US market. Finding a partner like AmePower and enabling it with the capital it requires is a logical step for a major organization like Amazon.
The modularity of battery systems leads to easy incremental additions to capacity without having to replace the first deployed batteries. Similarly, intelligent choices about where to put solar in the first, second, third, and any other increments will mean that initial deployments can simply continue to operate as new capacity is installed. Careful attention is required to the converters and transformers to avoid having to rip and replace them when upgrading. This is possible, but isn’t common today, and moving smaller transformers and converters between sites at different levels of capacity might end up being required.
This action helps address the challenges of high initial costs, lack of standardization, cybersecurity concerns, and limited awareness and technical expertise that were identified in the diagnosis of charging microgrids early in the series.
Incremental capacity approaches differ for major depots and truck stops, but modularity is key to both. Find your LEGO and stick with it.
Previous articles in this series:
About the authors:
Rish Ghatikar has an extensive background in decarbonization, specializing in electric vehicles (EVs), grid integration, and demand response (DR) technologies. At General Motors (GM), he advanced transportation electrification energy services, as part of a broader climate strategy. Previously, at Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), he focused on digitalizing the electric sector, while at Greenlots, he commercialized EV-grid and energy storage solutions. His work at the DOE’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory spearheaded DR automation to support dynamic utility pricing policies. An active climate advocate, Ghatikar advises on policies and technologies that align the grid with transportation and energy use for sustainable growth.
Michael Barnard, a climate futurist and chief strategist at The Future Is Electric (TFIE), advises executives, boards, and investors on long-term decarbonization strategies, projecting scenarios 40 to 80 years into the future. His work spans industries from transportation and agriculture to heavy industry, advocating for total electrification and renewable energy expansion. Barnard, also a co-founder of Trace Intercept and an Advisory Board member for electric aviation startup FLIMAX, contributes regularly to climate discourse as a writer and host of the Redefining Energy – Tech podcast. His perspectives emphasize practical solutions rooted in physics, economics, and human behavior, aiming to accelerate the transition to a sustainable future.
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