WattEV Opens Fresno Truck Depot With Seven Megawatt Chargers on Highway 99
- EVs News
Marin Holt
- 0
- 5 minutes read
- MCS megawatt chargers: 7
- CCS chargers: 15 single-cord 240 kW
- Site capacity: up to 3.6 MW via PG&E Flex Connect
- Charging dwell time: 30 minutes or less
WattEV opened its seventh heavy-duty electric truck charging depot in California on June 30, 2026, energizing a public site on the Highway 99 freight corridor in Fresno with seven Megawatt Charging System (MCS) chargers and 15 single-cord 240 kW CCS chargers. The Fresno depot draws up to 3.6 megawatts through Pacific Gas & Electric’s Flex Connect program, which lets the site tap flexible load capacity during most hours even though only about 1 MW of firm capacity is available today. WattEV says the MCS chargers cut charging dwell times to 30 minutes or less, comparable to diesel refueling.
What Changed
The Fresno site is the first of four planned WattEV depots meant to link zero-emission freight across Northern California, connecting the ports of Oakland and Stockton with inland San Joaquin Valley hubs. Its seven MCS chargers put megawatt-class charging into public service on one of the state’s busiest truck routes rather than a demonstration yard. The Flex Connect arrangement is the notable engineering move: instead of waiting years for a substation upgrade to deliver 3.6 MW of firm capacity, WattEV manages load flexibly against roughly 1 MW of firm supply, letting the depot open now and scale as grid capacity catches up.
Why It Matters
Heavy trucks were the segment MCS was written for, and public megawatt charging on a working freight corridor is the milestone the standard needed to prove out. Thirty-minute dwell times make a battery-electric Class 8 truck operationally closer to a diesel on long hauls, the gap that has kept fleets cautious. Just as important, PG&E’s Flex Connect shows a path around the interconnection bottleneck that stalls large charging loads: managing demand against available grid capacity rather than waiting on new wires. WattEV plans depots at the Ports of Oakland and Stockton later in 2026 to extend the corridor.
Critical Perspective
Seven megawatt chargers make a corridor link, not a network. A 3.6 MW site with only about 1 MW of firm capacity depends on flexible load management holding up as more trucks plug in; sustained peak demand could expose the gap Flex Connect is papering over. The depot also opened without disclosed pricing or utilization figures, so whether Fresno throughput justifies the buildout is unproven. And the value of megawatt charging still hinges on trucks equipped to accept it: MCS-capable heavy-duty vehicles remain scarce, so most traffic at the site will use the slower CCS ports until the vehicle fleet catches up to the chargers.
Sources
- GlobeNewswire (WattEV) — Fresno depot grand opening
- Clean Trucking — WattEV California charging depots
- Charged EVs — WattEV megawatt charging expansion
