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You may be familiar with their high power demand, and the potential difficulties in ensuring there will be enough power available at a site or building complex to supply them.
The expensive solution is to simply request that the local utility supplier come and install more infrastructure (cables, transformers, breakers, etc) to handle the high power demands of both the EVs and existing regular building electrical loads.
There is however, an alternative option: Combine real-time load monitoring, connectivity, and real-time EV power limiting to use the existing site power.
In laymans terms: using technology to take the existing electrical infrastructure with its limitations, and distributing it cleverly such that building loads have priority and what remains goes to EV charging, so that the infrastructure is never overloaded, but EVs can still be charged.
In short, the reason anyone should consider Energy Management of this kind, is to:
Save costs
Spend little (if anything) on power infrastructure. Avoid expensive peaks.
Maximize charging power (speed)
Always charge with the most remaining power possible.
Future-proof the charging site
Future expansion for additional EVs is made more possible.
Compatibility
the system uses OCPP1.6 with APIs, so many charger brands are available
These past few years have seen a massive worldwide shift from Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) vehicles to Electric Vehicles (EV). Nearly all major car brands have started to offer EV models with stunning performance across the board. Some brands deal exclusively with EVs. Certain countries are planning to ban all ICE vehicles by 2030, some as early as 2025! EVs are the major alternative.
But what about the power demands of all these EVs? Charging at home, at work, and on the road – what will this look like?
Its not well known that EVs have a tremendous appetite for power and energy. The typical EV at below-average charge speed needs the same power as two small homes – at fast charge its 30 small homes!
So let’s just all build more renewable power stations – have them everywhere, one might say. Indeed, this would solve many a power problem. We have the tech. We have the know-how. We have the motivation. Then we could be transported on sunshine – Green is great!
But green or maybe not so much, how do we get this extra power across existing electrical infrastructure and into our society? Freestanding small buildings with some room for small-scale energy generation (SSEG) shouldn’t be too challenging. But what about areas where many EVs must charge together and there is little room for SSEG – like apartment blocks, shopping centers, and parkades?
Enter Load Management! Smart technologies and connectivity now allow for the throttling of power consumption, and this is a standardized requirement within all EVs and chargers. Groups of EVs can be power controlled with Dynamic and Adaptive Load Management (DLM / ALM).
This is used with existing infrastructure in tight situations so that legal limits are not exceeded, and maximum charging can happen.
At this time of day, very few vehicles are charging due to residents having already left to carry out their day's schedule. The building's electrical demand is typically very low during this time.
During this period the EV chargers are set to their highest charge rate. 7kW, 11kW or 22kW depending on the charger and vehicle.
With residents slowly returning home and turning on air conditioners and other household electrical items, the building's electrical demand has also increased to a moderate level.
Residents have also plugged in and started topping up their vehicle's battery.
The EV charging demand is at a low to moderate level, with the EV infrastructure still being able to provide a high level of charge rate.
We are now in a Peak Demand period for EV charging and the electrical demand from building residents due to cooking, hot water, and air conditioning.
The EV charging Load Management is now monitoring the building's power demand and preventing overloading while still providing charging capabilities to the vehicles.
During this period, the chargers will be derated to a slow charge rate to prevent overloading the building's electrical supply.
While the building’s electrical demand is now low due to residents sleeping, the level of demand for EV charging is moderate.
The EV Load Management is now providing a higher charge rate and will start providing the maximum charging rate as more EVs start completing their charge and dropping off the network.
At Egen Electrical, we offer a world-leading backend control platform with smart metering technology and wireless connectivity to manage scalable groups of chargers, whilst allowing full billing, payment, and control facilities.
The computing for DLM is given a fixed power limit for a group of chargers. For example: if a site has a maximum supply of 500A, we allocate 150A of that for EV charging. Then the system ensures that 150A drawn by the EV chargers is never exceeded. DLM is simple and requires no extra hardware.
But this limit is fixed and is adjustable only when a technician logs into the system. If for example, the building loads amount to only 100A, and the EV chargers are already at their 150A limit with consequent slower charging, that’s 250A extra that could have been used by the chargers.
The shortfalls of DLM are solved with ALM: it uses a smart meter to measure the real-time power consumption of the whole site and adjusts this limit in real-time. This means that in the scenario mentioned above, the spare 250A would be assigned to EV charging, totaling 350A.
As building demand changes, this adaptive limit also changes, all in real-time.