Voltera says that it is redefining the path to fleet electrification with its infrastructure-as-a-service model, addressing logistical, financial, and operational challenges. Voltera’s approach combines data driven site selection, flexible power options, and co-location strategies.

One of its flagship locations is in Lynnwood, California. The facility features 65 dual core charges, each delivering up to one hundred and eighty kilowatts of power. It can serve up to two hundred class eight trucks per day, supporting the demands of port operations in Los Angeles corridor and Long Beach.

Lawren Markle, TRC, Voltera’s spokesman & partner: Largely focused on the drayage truck routes, that are supported along the 710 freeway here. If you pop on the entrance ramp right here, 12 miles later you’re down at the port of Long Beach, you’re picking up your containers, you’re making your runs throughout Southern California, and then at the end of your day you’ll bring the truck back here, bobtail, and charge here at this facility.

We have 65 chargers here, and they’re all dual cord so that you have a little bit more reliability, because you’ve got two cords, if one were to break for example you’ve got a second one, so there’s redundancy.

These are rated at a 180 kilowatts as far as the charging rate, which matches up well with the truck that they’re using. A Class 8 truck they’re using has a charge rate limit of a 120 kilowatts, so they actually have more power than they need. Typically, a truck’s gonna take about four hours to charge here, and they’ll do that overnight, and then the trucks will go out very early in the morning, go down, pick up their containers, make their runs. There’s also parking here on-site for drivers, so they’ll bring in their personal vehicles, pick up their tractor, and then head out for the day’s operations.

One of the things about this site is that you don’t need any identification to get the charger started. You just plug right into the truck, and it’ll begin charging immediately because all these trucks here have been provisioned. In fact, they track the individual identification numbers on the trucks through the chargers. That gives them great back-end data if they want to look at charging curves on a particular vehicle.

And it’s also much faster to get that handshake and charging started, when you plug in the vehicle. So it’s really, optimized for drayage operations.

It’s a multi-tenant site, so you can have several fleet operators operating out of this location.

But there is a lot of hardware that goes into a site like this.

Many of these big pieces of transformer and switchgear take a long time to be ordered and installed. So when Voltera builds a site like this, there’s a lot of planning that goes into that, spec’ing the site, working with the customer, understanding the duty cycle of the trucks, how many we’ll be charging at any given time. This helps them configure the parameters of the site and select the correct hardware. This big piece of iron behind me is a transformer that takes 16 kilovolts from primary service, from the utility and convert it down to 480 volts, which is then distributed out to the individual chargers.

We also havemiddle-voltage switch gear here, which actually takes the feed from the utility and distributes it to the transformers. There are also distribution boxes that bring the power out to the individual chargers. If they’re maintaining the chargers, those provide shut-off switches as well. So, there is a lot of big hardware that you have to configure and get customized for the site to make it operate correctly.

Voltera is also developing new sites to expand its reach. One of the facilities acquired in October 2024, located in West Sacramento, will feature 100 charging stalls with a power supply exceeding one megawatt.

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