Commercial EV charging points across Kent

The estates around Dartford, Aylesford, Ashford and the Medway towns are dominated by storage and distribution. Those sites have large yards, hardstanding rather than landscaped car parks, and vehicle movements that follow delivery schedules rather than office hours.

Charging on a yard is a different install from charging on a car park. Cable routes cross ground that takes heavy vehicle loading, bollard protection matters more, and the units need to survive being worked around rather than parked next to.

UK Power Networks operates across the whole county through its South Eastern network, so unlike Surrey and West Sussex there is no boundary question in Kent. That makes the connection process more predictable, though it does not make capacity any easier to come by on a large site.

Where a depot wants rapid charging, the connection is usually the long pole in the programme rather than the equipment. We establish what the site can get before anything is specified, because the lead time on an application sets the timetable for the whole job.

Kent is not only distribution. Kings Hill near West Malling, the growth around Ebbsfleet, and the office stock in Maidstone, Canterbury and Tunbridge Wells give the county a real workplace charging market as well.

Those sites are the more familiar problem: surface car parks, long dwell times, and staff who want to arrive with a low battery and leave full. More bays at a modest rate beats fewer fast ones almost every time.

Away from the motorway corridors, Kent has a lot of small commercial premises in market towns and villages, and a genuine rural network where supplies are weaker and three phase is not a given. On those sites the first question is what the incoming supply actually is, because it changes what is possible far more than the choice of unit does.

Kent's housing runs from Victorian terraces in the Medway towns and the coastal resorts through substantial interwar and post-war suburban stock to a large amount of recent development around Ashford and Ebbsfleet. The newer estates are the most straightforward. Oast conversions and listed rural property need the most thought about where equipment goes and how it is finished.

The first is a distribution yard off the M20 or M2 with vans returning in the evening and leaving early. The duty cycle decides everything: how much energy has to go into the fleet overnight, and how wide the window is.

The second is an office or business park site around Kings Hill, Maidstone or Ebbsfleet, which is the more familiar long-dwell workplace problem and usually the easiest to solve well.

The third is a rural or market town premises where the incoming supply is weaker than expected and three phase cannot be assumed. On those the survey is doing real work rather than confirming what everyone already knew.