Smart Charging Solutions for Electric Vehicles

Managing Capacity & Changing Behaviors

Several years ago, in the UK, GreenFlux did the largest smart charging test that had ever been done at that point. The project, set up by the Western Power District (WPD) in partnership with pioneering UK EV leasing company DriveElectric, was called Electric Nation. DriveElectric provided an electric car and charging station connected to the GreenFlux platform to more than 700 households.

During the project, WPD would send GreenFlux the available capacity for the neighborhood where the car was and GreenFlux would manage that capacity in the charging stations so that they would never go over a certain threshold. This was important because while countries like the Netherlands and Germany have plenty of clean energy – in fact, they occasionally have a surplus due to things like wind farms and solar panels – in countries like the UK this isn’t always the case.

“Typically, at home in the Netherlands, you would have a 25 amps connection and if you want to charge a car like a Tesla or a Jaguar, that would take more than your entire house. There aren’t enough amps so in order to meet that demand you typically would have to upgrade the entire connection to your home, which would be prohibitively expensive.”

This is where the GreenFlux solution made all the difference: the company looked at the available capacity and gave everything left over to the car, doing away with the need to upgrade the home’s connection.  But how did this optimize and manage available energy from the provider’s side while putting less strain on the infrastructure grid?

“At night, when people are usually sleeping, energy consumption is obviously lower,” explains Sanichar.  “WPD wanted to see if people were charging more at night or during the day, and also test how we could influence changes in behavior. So, we put an incentive in our app: a ‘priority’ button. If people pressed the priority button, they could charge their car whenever they wanted. If they didn’t press the priority button their car would be charged using managed available capacity at night and they wouldn’t be charged any extra fee.  In fact, if they didn’t press the priority button at all during the span of a month, they would be given a voucher.  After two or three months, people caught on and we ended up giving everyone vouchers!”

What GreenFlux and WPD learned is that when people first buy an EV they worry the car won’t be charged when they need it but once they get used to the system, they realize that paying for priority was not necessary.

This knowledge also applies to companies who operate large parking facilities. During the day, most company cars are sitting unused in a parking space for up to eight hours. Upgrading outlets to a higher amperage isn’t optimal, so the GreenFlux solution – allocating available capacity between the cars during those eight hours – means the cars all get charged while the company doesn’t need to invest in new connections – and capacity thresholds aren’t exceeded.

“Tele2 IoT has excellent roaming solutions. We have customers all over the world – Europe, South America, North America, Asia – so we need coverage wherever we have a connected charging station.  Tele2 IoT has us covered, literally. The network agreements Tele2 IoT has allows us to get the coverage we need, no matter where we are. Additionally, Tele2 IoT’s customer service has really stepped up and is really professional when we need help. So, it’s been great growing with Tele2 IoT and knowing we are getting what we need.”

If you would like to learn more about how Tele2 IoT can enable your business, please get in touch.