Smart load balancing :Efficient power distribution in EV charging management system
Load balancing prevents overcapacity by distributing the available capacity equally over all charging ports at a given location.This article will walk you through how smart load balancing helps to optimize EV charging management systems.
What is smart load balancing
Efficient power distribution or smart load balancing is the term used to describe the process of balancing demand for energy.Load management reduces energy usage during peak demand periods, reducing the burden on the grid. Load balancing is key for service providers to avoid stress on grids during peak demand hours.The EV charging load balancing ecosystem simply means the charging service provider can access electricity from the grid during off-peak hours and store it onsite to meet peak customer demand without paying peak-hour rates to the utility.
Charging management system and its role in smart load balancing
Charging Management Software (CMS) is used by fleet operators, charging operators, and others, to monitor and optimize electric vehicle charging operations.By directly connecting to EV chargers, a CMS is able to not only keep track of charging activities but also manage the network’s power consumption.
A charge management system lets the charging site operator control how much power each station can use when multiple EVSE (electric vehicle supply equipment) units are connected to the same circuit. The chargers will automatically follow the pre-set protocol to balance electricity usage by each EVSE. Some core CMS functionalities are:
Energy management and utility integration-With Smart Charging, users can optimize site operations and also receive utility signals for demand response
Fleet optimization and vehicle telematics-CMS can provide a fleet management system that will allow ground operators to manage the site’s charging operations more smoothly by creating more visibility of the charging power, vehicle SoC, and even vehicle schedules.
Payment methods-The CMS provides a billing system that distinguishes the type of operations, customers, and even the type of vehicles. This allows customers to track payments with a high degree of flexibility and precision.
Hardware monitoring and access control-The CMS allows extensive monitoring of the on-site charging hardware. The real-time control helps people to make sure there are no issues.CMS has a variety of authentication options to restrict access to defined user groups. The CMS can give access via RFID cards, credit cards, mobile apps, or even with the use of vehicle identifiers.
Alert system and troubleshooting-It lets the customer know about any hardware, charging, or operational issues. These alerts can reach the customer via email and text, as well as directly through the CMS dashboard.
How smart load balancing works
Load balancing distributes the available capacity proportionally over all active charging stations. In doing so, optimal charging is provided to all electric vehicles at your location, within the limits of your charging stations’ capacity.
For example there are 5 charging points available and available capacity is 30kW.So if there are 4 cars, all four cars will charge at 7.4kW each. Now the 5th car enters the charging station.How to solve this ? Here dynamic load balancing will distribute full available power to all 5 cars equally.In this case each car starts charging at 6kW.But 5th car needs to charge at minimum 7.4kW. So the 5th car will not be able to charge until one of the other cars stops charging.Here priority load balancing comes into picture.Rather than equally distributing power between multiple charging stations, power is distributed on a priority basis.
In this type of load balancing the charging status of each car is evaluated and when it is identified that the second car has consumed the most power. Now the second car would be queued to allow the fifth car to start charging.Once every few minutes, the charging status of each car is evaluated again. This time, the first car is fully charged, so the second car is released from the queue and allowed to charge again.
Kazam CMS
Kazam's CMS platform allows us to control, onboard, manage, analyse, load balance all charging stations in a single dashboard. Our EV CMS provides a wide range of cloud-based services, including flexible tariff management ,remote maintenance and trouble shooting,load management ,driver and vehicle management.Features of Kazam CMS includes OCPP,mobile app integration,integrated payment options and end to end solution.
