Forecast
The energy each truck will need for its next duty, not the energy the depot currently gives it.
Smart Depot Share
Know your spare charging capacity, a day ahead.
Smart Depot Share is a day-ahead planning service for depots running electric HGVs. It forecasts how much energy the home fleet will really need for the next day’s work, sets that against the depot’s charging capacity, and turns the difference into firm windows that a visiting fleet can reserve on a named charger.
Tools that handle depot access already exist and they do their job. What they cannot do is answer the question underneath it, which is an energy question rather than an access one.
Plan
Each vehicle charged to what its next duty requires, by the time it is needed.
Share
Remaining capacity published as firm, bookable windows on named chargers, the day before.
The problem
Most UK haulage operators are small or medium-sized businesses. Few can justify charging infrastructure of their own, and those that can rarely use it fully. Chargers stand idle overnight while operators a few miles away have nowhere to put an electric truck. The constraint is not the number of chargers in the ground. It is that nobody can say, with enough confidence to sell or book it, when a charger is genuinely free.
Wherever depot charging is built, it should be shared. The hard part is not advertising spare time. It is knowing what is actually spare.
How it works on the depot
1. The next day’s duties come in
The duty schedule from the operator’s transport management system, with telematics and state of charge from the vehicles.
2. The energy engine forecasts consumption
A physics-based model of each vehicle against its own duty: payload, distance, gradient, speed profile and ambient conditions. It predicts the energy each truck will use, not the energy the depot currently gives it.
3. A charge plan is produced
Each vehicle is charged to what its next duty requires and by the time it is needed, rather than to a standard target every night. This is where the spare capacity comes from.
4. Windows are published
The remaining capacity is expressed as time-bounded windows on specific chargers, issued the day before and bookable in advance.
5. The charger is released and the window closes
The home fleet’s claim on the charger is given up for the booked period and taken back afterwards.
Tested, and in trial
The energy forecasting engine is in service. It is validated against published methodology from SINTEF, the Norwegian research institute, and extended with our own coefficient set covering several vehicle classes and operating geographies including the UK.
The booking layer is newer. It is in trial at a UK haulage depot through the winter of 2026 and 2027, under the Freight Innovation Fund Accelerator, operated by Connected Places Catapult and funded by the Department for Transport. The trial covers baseline capture, day-ahead forecasting against real duties, and live window booking.
What it achieves
For the host operator
Charging assets earn through the hours they would otherwise stand idle, which changes the payback case on infrastructure already installed and on the next tranche. Charging moves from a nightly routine to a planned activity with known headroom.
For the visiting operator
A charging slot that can be relied on when the route is planned, rather than found on the day. For an operator with no depot infrastructure, that is often the difference between an electric vehicle being viable on a lane and not.
For the wider network
More electric trucks served per charger installed. The same public money and the same grid connection reach further.
How we work
MHTech Energies is a consultancy. We work on fleet electrification, depot energy and transport decarbonisation, and we develop our own software where a problem is worth solving and nothing adequate exists. Smart Depot Share came out of that work rather than ahead of it.
To discuss Smart Depot Share for your depot or fleet, contact Robert Helme, MHTech Energies Ltd, London.