Last week I attended Fully Charged Live North in Harrogate, a great show that showcased everything within the EV world from chargepoints to vehicles as well as energy efficiency improvements for the home.
Whilst visiting each of the EV chargepoint stands I noticed a reoccurring theme on some of the features they were pushing as their unique selling point and that was the ability to integrate with any back-office software ensuring smart queuing can be achieved and improved load balancing capabilities. Both of these features will benefit not only the chargepoint users but also those who own the units. This blog talks you through both features and why they are so important going forward.
Now it’s important to note these two features will only benefit businesses where EV drivers will be spending quite a bit of time at that location such as business centres, managed workspace facilities, conference centres, visitor attractions and leisure facilities. They won’t benefit chargepoints at service stations where high-powered chargers are needed to provide instant access to drivers.
Smart Queuing
You may frequently experience a scenario where you arrive at a location and all the chargepoints are in use. Instead of sitting in your car waiting for one to become available, with smart queuing enabled you won’t have to wait for hours on end, wasting your day, hoping for one of the EV chargepoints to become available. A feature pioneered by Monta, called Smart Queuing allows you to log on and join a virtual queue. When a chargepoint becomes available you will get a notification that will give you a time period to return to your vehicle and park your EV and plug it in. This feature enables you as a driver to go about your day instead of waiting next to a parking space for a charger to become available.
To ensure the smart queuing works correctly EV drivers who are plugged in will also be told they have a time period to vacate the charge bay once they have finished charging, if they don’t move their vehicle within the specified time period they will be charged per minute after the time lapses. This ensures drivers will move their vehicle otherwise face having an expensive parking space to pay for.
Dynamic Load Balancing
This feature enables available power to be evenly distributed to a series of EV chargepoints on site. A critically important feature on a site where there are a number of EV chargepoints typically five or more and there isn’t the spare capacity available for each of these sockets to charge at their full capacity at the same time.
With dynamic load balancing EV chargepoints are able to intelligently adjust how much power they draw out to ensure the main fuse doesn’t blow. As a car becomes fully charged or unplugs and leaves the parking space, the power from that unit is then spread evenly to the other chargepoints. Similarly, if a car then visits and plugs in to a spare socket, therefore adding to the number of cars charging at once, the power is spread evenly to ensure the new car plugged in receives a charge whilst the others already on charge continue to receive some power.
With dynamic load balancing in place chargepoint owners will have the piece of mind that the fleet of EV’s are charging efficiently and as safely as possible.
Dynamic Load Balancing uses smart features and data analysis to ensure power consumption is monitored 24/7 and adjusts the power instantly to what available load is or isn’t available at any given time. Static load balancing is a pre programme limit that is set, meaning the chargepoint will only ever draw the limit it’s set at even if it can draw more at certain points of the day i.e., when there is a less demand on the grid (at night or early morning) Although still a useful feature to have when power issues are a concern static load balancing does have its limitations.
As we move forward, both of smart queuing and dynamic load balancing will become two important features. Smart queuing will aid in preventing a negative experience when wanting to use an EV chargepoint and dynamic load balancing will assist in tackling the power consumption issues some sites may have. This, in the long run will save a business money and time by not having to apply for a new electric connection solely for EV chargers.
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