The logistics real estate firm Prologis is teaming with Performance Team, a third-party logistics (3PL) arm of container shipping giant A.P. Møller – Maersk A/S, to launch Southern California’s largest heavy-duty electric vehicle (EV) charging depot, located near the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach and powered by the nation’s largest EV truck microgrid, the partners said.
The “Denker charging depot” will have the ability to charge up to 96 EV trucks simultaneously, supporting Performance Team’s fleet of Volvo VNR Electric trucks, which have a range of 240 miles and can charge up to 80% in 90 minutes. The depot was constructed in just five months, and is located directly off the Harbor (110) Freeway in Los Angeles on Denker Avenue, and within five miles of Interstate 405 and California State Route 91 (SR91).
The move comes against the backdrop of California’s requirements to end the sale of diesel trucks and move to electric drayage trucks by 2035 and to electric heavy-duty trucks by 2045, they said. That policy is pushing companies operating in the state to invest in charging infrastructure to support those operations, and it is pushing state utilities to upgrade the electrical grid to support the added load. However, those improvements take time. So for this project, Prologis installed specialized charging infrastructure to get the depot online quickly, rather than waiting up to two years for the grid upgrade.
Specifically, Prologis partnered with Mainspring Energy to build a microgrid, which is any small network of electrical generators and loads that may be grid-connected but is capable of operating independently of the local grid. The Prologis Denker microgrid uses 2.75 MW of fuel-flexible, hydrogen-ready linear generators paired with 18 MWh of batteries to provide up to 9 MW of charging capacity.
The Denker charging depot is the third Southern California commercial truck EV charging project Prologis Mobility and Performance Team have opened together. Performance Team facilities in the California cities of Santa Fe Springs and Commerce, equipped with Prologis Mobility charging infrastructure, provide 4 MW of charging capacity—enough to charge 38 electric trucks.
