The provision of charging infrastructure increases the demand on a site’s electrical supply. Unless a site has the sufficient capacity the addition of multiple charge points or a rapid charger will be a difficult and costly project. A centre had an electrical supply capacity of 423kVA. The installer’s site survey showed that the peak demand is 195kVA. As such they could not use all four 100kw rapid chargers at full capacity without causing a power failure.
To overcome this and still get the fastest charge from their electric vehicle charging assets, a Dynamic demand controller (DDC) was manufactured and installed by Park & Recharge. A DDC monitors the electrical load on the main panel and adjusts the charging rate from each charger depending on the available power supply. A DDC can increase and decrease the amount vehicles can draw depending on how much demand there is on the existing supply.
The Dynamic Demand Controller (DDC) addresses the challenge by monitoring and adjusting the charging rate so that power demand never exceeds the site supply. Also monitoring the site background demand the system ensures that charge rates are optimized whilst avoiding the need to upgrade the supply and enabling more charge points to be installed to meet the demand for charging. The DDC can also be used as the GSM interface for a group of charge points to interface with a Chargepoint Management System via 1 SIM card reducing the operating cost of charge point communications.
