The 4-Hour Wait That Saves Fleets Half Their Charging Bill

Fleet operators don't get to pick when their vehicles need power. A driver's shift ends at 5 pm, the vehicle gets plugged in, and charging starts immediately, right in the middle of peak electricity rates.

That's the problem Peak Aware Charging solves.

What it does

Peak Aware Charging is a Terawatt software feature that automatically throttles charging power down during on-peak hours: the windows, set by time of day and time of year, when grid demand and energy prices are highest. Outside those windows, vehicles charge at full power, just at a lower rate. 

A vehicle can still plug in during peak hours, and our technology ensures the charging doesn’t actually ramp up until rates go down later in the evening.

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How it plays out for a fleet

Say a shift ends at 5pm and the next one doesn't start until 7am. Without Peak Aware Charging, plugging in at 5 pm means paying on-peak rates for the entire session. With it, the driver can still plug in right away and head home at the end of their shift. Power simply stays low until on-peak pricing ends, then ramps up automatically once cheaper energy kicks in. 

The vehicle is plugged in the whole time. The driver's schedule doesn't change. The only thing that shifts is when the electrons actually flow.

The result

For fleets with long dwell windows between shifts, that shift in timing adds up fast: 50%+ cost savings per charging session, with no impact on driver shift time.

This is the kind of problem we like solving at Terawatt. Fleet economics come down to a lot of small, compounding levers, and energy timing is one of the biggest ones hiding in plain sight. Peak Aware Charging ensures the infrastructure is smart enough to work around fleet operations, not against them.

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