Load management: How to reduce the costs of your charging infrastructure with smart charging

The most important thing about electromobility? You have to be able to rely on it. Accordingly, the charging infrastructure must also run smoothly and, above all, be efficient. This often presents companies with challenges, especially when the connected load available on site reaches its limits when setting up several charging points and charging e-vehicles at the same time.

After all, nobody wants to run the risk of fuses blowing, expensive load peaks occurring - or vehicles not being fully charged.

Enter: load management.

To keep charging running, load management is a necessary and sensible investment to ensure the efficiency, grid compatibility and cost-effectiveness of your own charging infrastructure. In the following, we will tell you how you can significantly reduce the costs of your charging infrastructure with intelligent charging.

The problem: Imagine you want to electrify a fleet. Sounds good, but as soon as several charging points go into operation at the same time, experience shows that the available connected load quickly becomes scarce. An expansion is expensive - so you'd rather keep driving with diesel, right? Of course, this is not a long-term and, above all, not a sustainable solution.

This is exactly where intelligent load management comes in: it ensures that the available power at the location is used optimally without exceeding the permissible limit. This means you can connect several charging points without the need for a costly connection extension.

A load management system efficiently distributes the available power at the location to all active charging points. Intelligent control ensures that the contractually agreed maximum power consumption is not exceeded in order to avoid expensive power peaks and unnecessary additional costs. The individual charging processes at the charging points are therefore controlled centrally via load management. There are two basic variants: static vs. dynamic load management.

With static load management, a fixed maximum power limit is defined for the charging infrastructure. This is then intelligently distributed to the vehicles connected to the charging points. However, the influence of other factors such as the building load is not taken into account in this scenario. Static load management is therefore particularly suitable for locations with a constant energy demand or few vehicles that need to be charged.

With dynamic load management, the available total charging capacity is adapted flexibly and in real time to the current load at the location. A local electricity meter measures the total load to the second - this enables continuous optimization of power distribution for greater efficiency.

This option usually makes more sense for companies. Dynamic load management can guarantee that the charging processes of company fleets, logistics operations or bus depots function optimally and that operations remain running, even if other factors influence the overall load.

Example: If the company canteen or the sorting system in the parcel depot is running at full speed at lunchtime, the system automatically reduces the charging capacity - and increases it again as soon as capacity becomes available.

In addition, intelligent load management can even be used to dynamically control charging points that are connected via different sub-distribution boards - for example with ChargePilot® Multi Fuse and Multi Meter.

Smart load management is therefore a sensible investment in order to keep the costs for your own charging infrastructure on site as low as possible. But are vehicles even fully charged if the charging power is throttled in between?

Yes, definitely.

For one thing, in practice, vehicles are usually parked at the charging station for longer than they need to charge. Intelligent load management makes efficient use of these longer time windows and also offers flexibility for special cases. If, for example, a vehicle has to leave earlier or should be given priority for charging, intelligent load management offers various options. Certain RFIDs or charging points can be easily prioritized in the system. For logistics or bus depots, charging priorities can be aligned with actual demand and timetables so that vehicles are always fully charged when they are deployed.

Two typical scenarios:

• Charging at the company parking lot: Employees park for approx. 8 hours. Even if everyone arrives at the same time in the morning, the electricity consumption of the vehicles is distributed throughout the day by load management. Full charging is possible without any problems and without expensive peak loads. If company cars are needed during the day for out-of-town appointments or longer distances, these vehicles can be prioritized for charging in the morning.
• Charging in the bus depot: Buses arrive at the depot in the evening, e.g. around 8 pm. Instead of charging all of them immediately at full power (which quickly affects the electricity bill if the grid load is high), load management intelligently distributes the charging over the night. This means that the buses are charged cheaply and are all ready for use in the morning.

Even more efficient charging (and saving) can be achieved with smart additional functions. If there is a photovoltaic system at the location, for example, the load management system can detect surplus solar energy and prioritize its use for charging. This increases self-consumption and saves electricity costs. Dynamic tariff optimization incorporates flexible energy prices on the market and automatically shifts charging processes to the cheapest times.

Depending on local conditions, intelligent load management can save between 30 and 70 % of the usual costs. That's worth it, isn't it?

Extra bonus: Grid-compatible charging, i.e. adapting the charging power to the respective grid situation, supports a stable power supply and reduces the risk of local overload. After all, no business owner has a power outage due to grid overload on their bingo card.

Why should you rely on load management with OCPP for your charging infrastructure? OCPP stands for Open Charge Point Protocol and enables standardized communication between charging points and the central charging and energy management system. As an open standard, OCPP ensures interoperability between devices from different manufacturers and supports secure data transmission within the charging infrastructure.

• Load management based on OCPP can be easily integrated into existing energy systems and improves control between consumers, generators and the grid.
• Standardized communication: OCPP enables standardized communication between chargers and management systems. This facilitates the integration of different hardware and software solutions and ensures seamless cooperation.
• Future-proof: OCPP is continuously developed to keep pace with technological advances and new requirements. This ensures that charging infrastructures using OCPP remain compatible and secure in the future.
• Optimization of the charging process: OCPP creates the basis for advanced functions such as load management, user management and billing systems. This enables more efficient use of the available charging capacity and improves the user experience.

The advantages are clear: intelligent load management takes your own charging infrastructure to the next level, as the system allows companies to fully exploit the potential of an electric fleet - especially with regard to the cost-effectiveness of the charging infrastructure.

On the one hand, there are lower investment costs: no expensive grid expansion is necessary - e.g. medium-voltage connection (here the costs quickly range between €70,000 and €250,000). In many cases, the existing infrastructure with lines and transformer stations is sufficient, as load management ensures that not all vehicles have to be charged at full power at the same time.

On the other hand, lower operating costs are incurred for charging e-fleets, as charging processes are shifted to more favorable times (e.g. at night) and expensive load peaks are avoided, which have a direct impact on grid charges or power prices in many electricity tariffs.

It can therefore be said that intelligent load management is the key to setting up and operating your charging infrastructure economically. It not only reduces your costs, but also makes your charging processes smarter, more flexible and future-proof. With solutions such as ChargePilot®, not only can you control any number of charging points, you can also exploit the full potential of your charging infrastructure. Efficient, flexible and stable - today and the day after tomorrow.