West Yorkshire Fire & Rescue Service Fleet Electrification

The challenge

A fire and rescue fleet has to stay available for emergency response while it plans decarbonisation. Heavy fire appliances and lighter operational vehicles do different work, and they return to stations across the service. Charging has to fit those patterns.

West Yorkshire Fire & Rescue Service registered 354 vehicles across 42 locations. Every location needs chargers. Before committing to vehicles or grid upgrades, the service needed evidence of which journeys a current electric vehicle can finish, and how much power each site will draw.

The approach

This was one of three fire and rescue studies in the programme, alongside Nottinghamshire and South Yorkshire. Dynamon imported the service’s telematics into ZERO and simulated each vehicle’s real journeys against current electric vehicle models. Vehicles without enough telematics were left out of the simulation. That left 238 of the 354 registered vehicles modelled.

ZERO then sized depot chargers for each of the 42 locations and worked out site power demand, so the recommendation matched how vehicles actually return and dwell.

West Yorkshire was also one of three regional clustering studies. Alongside West Yorkshire Police, the study looked at police and fire sites together, and at whether co-located sites could share electrical infrastructure while each service kept its own operations.

The results

Of the 238 vehicles modelled, 192 complete 100% of their journeys on a current electric vehicle, and a further 7 complete 95–99%. Together that is 199 vehicles, 84% of the modelled fleet. Those vehicles can go electric at the next replacement and still cover at least 95% of the journeys they make today.

The clustering study with West Yorkshire Police found that shared electrical infrastructure at suitable co-located sites could cut grid upgrade costs by around 20%.

All 42 locations need depot charging. ZERO recommended 87 chargers:

• 61 chargers at 11 kW
• 25 chargers at 50 kW
• 1 charger at 150 kW

Part of a national programme

The West Yorkshire study is one of 12 fleet reports commissioned by the Midlands Net Zero Hub and the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, with the Home Office. Across the programme, about 7,500 vehicles were registered across 480 locations, and about 6,400 vehicles were modelled on 26.5 million miles of real telematics.

Of the vehicles modelled, 82% (about 5,300) can go electric at their next replacement while completing 95% or more of their journeys. The 12 studies recommended 1,563 depot chargers in total.

Regional clustering studies for Nottinghamshire, South Yorkshire and West Yorkshire looked at police and fire sites together, and at ambulance services in the wider programme. At suitable co-located sites, shared infrastructure could cut grid upgrade costs by around 20%.

The Hub has published a national assessment of all 48 UK police forces and agencies. It estimates about 18,300 charge points across more than 2,000 police sites, at an investment of about £1.4 billion. Around 80% of that cost is grid connections and electrical upgrades. Participating services received ZERO access for further scenario planning.