For NI businesses running vehicles
Electrifying a fleet is a different job from fitting one home charger. It's about your electrical supply, charging several vehicles overnight without tripping the main, and claiming the grant that takes 75% off each socket. Here's how depot charging works in NI, and how to get it costed properly.
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The three things that decide a fleet install are your electrical supply, how you spread that power across multiple chargers, and the grants. Get those right and depot charging is cheaper per mile than fuel and predictable to run. Get them wrong and you either overload the supply or overspend on it.
Last reviewed: 11 July 2026
Shares your available supply dynamically across every charger, so a row of vans can charge overnight without overloading the connection. It usually lets you fit more sockets than the raw supply figure suggests, because vehicles rarely all need full power at once.
Many commercial sites have a three-phase supply, which opens up faster 22kW charging and more total capacity. A registered installer confirms what you have and whether an NIE Networks connection upgrade is worth it. See our 7kW vs 22kW guide.
Overnight depot charging and daytime top-ups need different layouts. Good design sizes the sockets and power around how your vehicles actually work, not just the number of parking bays, so you don't over- or under-build.
Most NI fleets settle on a mix, not a single answer. It comes down to where each vehicle sits overnight and how far it runs in a day. Three patterns cover almost everyone.
Vehicles return to one yard overnight. You own the sockets, the load management and the tariff, so you can charge the whole fleet in the cheapest off-peak window. Best for vans and HGVs that sleep on site. It needs supply headroom and, usually, load management.
Chargers for staff, visitor and pool cars through the working day, sitting alongside the fleet on the same site. This is the part the Workplace Charging Scheme is built for. See our workplace charging page.
The practical NI pattern for take-home vans: fit a 7kW charger at the driver's home and the van charges overnight on their domestic supply, with no depot to build. You then reimburse the driver for the electricity used.
The clean way to cost driver-home charging is a per-kWh reimbursement based on the driver's actual tariff, read straight from the charger's own energy reporting rather than guessed. Many NI drivers are on an EV night tariff (for example Economy 7 at about 18.95p per kWh overnight, or Power NI's EV Nightshift at about 17.79p, both checked July 2026), which keeps the reimbursement low and predictable. Our NI EV tariffs guide covers the current options, and the commercial charging page explains how a mixed setup gets costed.
On tax, a fully electric company car is charged at just 4% benefit-in-kind for 2026-27 (rising a point a year), against up to 39% for an equivalent petrol or diesel. That gap is a large part of why fleets are switching (gov.uk).
A naive sum says a 7kW socket needs 7kW of spare supply, so ten vans would need 70kW you almost certainly do not have. Dynamic load management gets around that: it measures the live incoming supply and shares whatever is spare across the connected chargers, throttling each one so the total never trips the main. Because the vans have all night to charge and rarely need full power at the same instant, they still finish by morning. It is what makes overnight depot charging affordable without an expensive NIE Networks supply upgrade, and it can hold charging inside your off-peak tariff window automatically.
The Workplace Charging Scheme takes a real bite out of a fleet install.
75%
Of the purchase and install cost of each chargepoint socket.
£500
Maximum grant per socket (up from £350 on 1 April 2026; schools up to £2,000).
40
Sockets you can claim for across all of your sites in total.
An authorised installer claims it against your invoice, so the discount comes off up front. Full detail on our Workplace Charging Scheme page.
For larger fleets
Most NI pages stop at the Workplace Charging Scheme. If you run a bigger operation, HGVs, vans or coaches charging at a depot, the Department for Infrastructure also lists a Depot Charging Scheme, and it is on a different scale.
70%
Of chargepoint and civil (groundworks) costs.
£1m
Maximum across all your sites, with no limit on the number of sites.
1
Application per organisation, made in fixed windows.
It is aimed at zero-emission HGVs, vans and coaches, and applications run in cyclical windows rather than all year round. The DfI lists a window that opened on 25 March 2026 and closed on 30 June 2026 (projects completing by 31 March 2027), and a second window from 28 October 2026 to 29 January 2027 (delivery by 31 March 2028). Windows and rates change between cycles, so confirm the current terms at source before planning around them: DfI: EV chargepoint and infrastructure grants.
Three pages that cover the rest of the picture for NI businesses.
Workplaces, fleets and customer car parks: what a business install involves and how we match you.
Chargers for staff and visitor parking, and how they sit alongside fleet vehicles on the same site.
Who qualifies, what it pays, and how an authorised installer claims it for you.
Tell us about your site and fleet and we'll match you with vetted NI commercial installers. They survey your supply, design the layout with load management, claim the Workplace Charging Scheme against your invoice, and handle NIE Networks notification. You get comparable quotes, not a single sales pitch, free and no obligation.
No obligation. We match you with up to 3 NICEIC-registered installers covering your area.
The main one is the Workplace Charging Scheme (WCS), an OZEV grant for organisations. It covers 75% of the purchase and installation cost of each chargepoint socket, capped at £500 per socket (the cap rose from £350 to £500 on 1 April 2026 for installs completed on or after that date), for up to 40 sockets across all of a business's sites. State-funded schools and colleges get a higher cap of £2,000 per socket. An authorised installer claims it against your invoice, so you see the discount up front. Larger depot operators may also qualify for the separate Depot Charging Scheme.
It is a separate, much larger NI grant aimed at bigger operators such as HGV, van and coach fleets that charge at a depot. The 2026/27 cycle covers 70% of chargepoint and civil (groundworks) costs, up to a maximum of £1 million across all your sites, with no limit on the number of sites but one application per organisation. Applications run in fixed windows rather than all year round: the Department for Infrastructure lists a window that opened on 25 March 2026 and closed on 30 June 2026 (projects completing by 31 March 2027), and a second window from 28 October 2026 to 29 January 2027 (delivery by 31 March 2028). Rates and windows change between cycles, so check the DfI page before planning around it.
Load management (sometimes called load balancing) shares your available electrical supply intelligently across multiple chargers, so charging several vehicles at once doesn't overload the connection or trip the main supply. For a depot charging a row of vans overnight it's essential: it lets you install more sockets than a naive calculation would allow, by spreading the power dynamically rather than running every socket flat out at the same moment.
Often, but not always. Many commercial premises already have a three-phase supply, which opens up faster 22kW charging and higher total capacity for multiple vehicles. A registered installer confirms what you have, whether your existing supply can carry the fleet, and whether an NIE Networks connection upgrade is worth considering. Smaller sites may run fine on single-phase 7kW sockets with load management.
That depends on your electrical supply and how many vehicles need charging in what window, not just the number of parking bays. Load management often lets you fit more sockets than the raw supply figure suggests, because vehicles rarely all need full power at the same instant. A commercial installer will size it around your duty cycle: overnight depot charging behaves very differently from quick top-ups during the working day.
Tell us about your site, roughly how many vehicles you run, and how they're used. We'll match you with vetted NI commercial installers who survey the supply, design the layout with load management, claim the Workplace Charging Scheme for you and handle NIE Networks notification. You get comparable quotes rather than a single sales pitch.
Vetted NI commercial installers, the Workplace Charging Scheme claimed for you, load management designed in. Free and no obligation.
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