Power management overview
Power management helps site hosts save significant costs on their charger installations by intelligently sharing existing power amongst groups of chargers.
Your dashboard has several features and capabilities to support complex commercial installations and maximize the efficient utilization of power capacity to save site hosts on infrastructure costs, including:
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Flexibility: The system can model a variety of complex installations, such as:
- Multiple circuits for a location
- Hierarchical model that can support tiers of nested sub-panels under main panels
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3-phase power: Charger phase wiring is represented to allow for power allocation by phase. This allows for the most efficient use of available capacity, and greater efficiency leads to reduced costs for site hosts.
- Other power-consuming devices sharing circuits with chargers are represented in phase wiring
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Reallocation of power: When vehicles reach full charge and charging slows down, power is reallocated to other chargers to maximize efficient utilization of available capacity.
- This efficiency yields faster charging speeds for drivers and further cost savings for site hosts.
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Round robin for over-subscription: If a breaker is oversubscribed by chargers such that even their minimum charging power (e.g. 6A) would exceed the breaker’s limit, power is allocated in a round robin fashion to keep power within safe operating limits.
- This is useful for long-term parking use cases, such as airports.
Dashboard experience
The power management dashboard experience is designed for three use cases:
- Demoing of power management system through a visual interface that empowers sales teams to effectively demo and showcase the system’s capabilities.
- Visual feedback so that installers can receive confirmation of successful deployments with accurate power management rules for a location, giving confidence during and after installation.
- Insight into live power allocation when troubleshooting chargers to to view power allocation for individual chargers and power management groups at any point in time.
How it works
Power management is accessed via the “Power” tab on the navigation sidebar of the dashboard. The electrical infrastructure is represented, including:
- All main panels and any sub-panels for a circuit with chargers with their names/labels, breaker ratings, and maximum continuous load.
- Charger phase wiring
- Other power-consuming devices sharing a circuit with chargers (referred to as “unmanaged loads” in the dashboard)
The amount of power allocated to individual chargers is highlighted, as well as the amount of power allocated to power management groups.
Note that there are many factors that determine the amount of power allocated to chargers at any given time, including:
- Power is allocated across phases, which may result in the sum of a group’s chargers' allocated amperage exceeding the breaker’s rating overall but not on a phase level (e.g. when chargers are not wired to the same phases).
- The power allocated to chargers usually includes a small buffer beyond actual power consumed by the charger. This allows for continuous monitoring of changes to power consumption, so that power can be reallocated when vehicles’ charging speeds slow down (or speed up).
- Power is allocated proportionally based on the charger’s maximum output. For example, an 80A charger will be allocated more power than a 32A charger in the same group.
- When chargers lose internet connectivity, the charger’s last allocated power will be reserved for that charger until it comes back online.