Establishing a charging network is relatively easy, but achieving the reliability and excellent maintenance of charging networks is only possible with a suitable Smart EV charging station management system. An electric vehicle charging operating system must support the charging stations’ monitoring and management. It also needs to report problems quickly and help get nonoperational stations running as soon as possible.
Every charging station that is not running is not making money for EV CPOs and EMSPs and frustrating the users.
All agree that a good customer experience is key to more general electric vehicle adaptation.
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EV Charging Station Management System – The Heart of E-Mobility
With e-mobility being a hot topic recently, it shows some significant obstacles to broader electric car adaptations.
The EVs are improving, but most potential users still suffer from so-called range anxiety.
The car manufacturers can only do a part of the job with better batteries and technical improvements.
However, until the charging stations for electric vehicles are practically available, e-mobility won’t get a real boost.
That is why the governments are giving initiatives to build more charging stations. Consequently, President Joe Biden plans to build half a million electric vehicle charging stations across the United States.
The US will spend 7.5 billion dollars on an EV infrastructure bill to make it happen.
Furthermore, in the UK, they also stepped up. They will make mandatory EV charging stations in new homes and buildings.
There are many different approaches around the world.
However, governments and professional circles agree that chargers’ availability and stability are crucial to EV drivers’ satisfaction.
Therefore more chargers are crucial to achieve a broader adaptation of electric vehicles.
New petrol and diesel cars will be banned in most countries somewhere from 2030 or 2035.
Consequently, there’s not much time left to build a network of charging stations supporting this somewhat radical move.
Disclaimer:
Tridens EV Charge is an all-in-one EV charging software solution for Charge Point Operators (EV CPO) and e-Mobility Service Providers (EMSP).
The software uses the OCPP protocol so that any OCPP-compliant station can connect to the system regardless of manufacturer or model.
Tridens EV charge can monitor, manage, troubleshoot, and configure any attributes on the station. Accordingly, it can be used for maintenance and analyzing customer behavior to introduce extensive pricing options.
This article will explain how real-time monitoring and maintenance work in Tridens’ electric vehicle charging station management system.
How Does the EV Charging Station Management System Work?
To satisfy EV owners, Charge Point Operators, and Electric Mobility Service Providers, keeping the charging stations running and deploying flexible and smart charging strategies is necessary.
Smart EV Charging: Unlocking Its Full Potential
Therefore, the providers must have an easy way to monitor, manage and troubleshoot an unlimited number of EV charging stations with a single operating system and an interface accessible over a web browser or cloud application.
Monitoring
To enable 24/7 monitoring, the Tridens EV Charge uses the Open Charge Point Protocol (OCPP).
It allows CPOs to connect directly to any charging station or group over the internet.
The charging monitoring function is the core of EV charging station management system for monitoring single charging stations and the whole EV charging platform as a group.
While the latest version, OCPP 2.0.1, is already out, OCPP 1.6 is still the most common in EV charging management systems.
Monitoring the Current State of Stations
Charge point operators (EV CPO) need real-time status updates on their entire EV charging operating system.
It includes data such as the total number of connected charging stations, the current status of the system, and how many of them are online, offline, or without communication.
Monitoring Consumption at Stations
The balance between the current or predicted power requirements for charging on a single charging station or a group and the supporting electrical grid is a significant challenge for Charge point operators.
Therefore, with the number of rising charging stations, the pressure on the electrical and EV charging infrastructure will grow.
A good EV charging management system will monitor the charging process of all the vehicles in the system.
It will also monitor real-time energy production, load balancing, local energy consumption, and electrical infrastructure capabilities.
The EV charging management software implementation enables the monitoring of power distribution equipment, convenient and unified management, and data sharing.
It can realize the total power of the site, the total current, total power, power factor, main transformer, switch state, reactive power compensation, and harmonic control equipment monitoring and control.
If the CPO needs some of the more advanced load balancing functions, they can also opt for unique third-party products developed specifically for this.
Third-party products can seamlessly integrate because the EV Charge solution supports REST APIs.
Monitoring of Sessions (Past and Open)
A Charge point operator can monitor past and open sessions and know and predict user behavior.
With daily or on-demand charging reports, a CPO can see the following:
- when users prefer to charge
- how fast do they want to charge
- if they need to implement charging restrictions in peak times
- what is the number of charging processes
- total revenue
- API interface to ERP systems
- interfaces to eRoaming platforms
- rate management
- other relevant data
That makes it easy to analyze and predict customer behavior and infrastructure performance. Consequently, EMSPs can prepare different charging and subscription plans for their users.
EV Charging Station Management
EV charging load balancing refers to power distribution across multiple vehicles and other users in the same electrical network.
It means it monitors the real-time power demand and dynamically adjusts each charging station’s charging rate.
So a high-capacity EV charger can also distribute its available power to all other occupied charging stations around him.
A Smart EV charging station management system also enables Supplier-managed charging (SMC), where charging providers can adjust the charging parameters according to different pricing plans or situations.
It can:
- limit charging power to the maximum power assigned to a user
- configures different electricity rate schedules to prioritize a specific client charging with dynamic EV charging load management
- distributes available charging power between vehicles depending on their selected pricing plan or departure time in fleet charging.
Adding Stations
As long as the new devices that a CPO wants to add to the EV charging network are OCPP compliant and can be connected to the cloud, adding a station or more is not worth mentioning.
Adding them is simple and fast.
Changing Parameters and Updating the Charging Station Settings
OCPP protocol allows the Charge point operator to change any parameter on the charging station or update a charger’s firmware.
It can be done to a single station or a group of stations as a stack update.
Creating Smart Charging Profiles
Smart EV charging means the central operating system can send load profiles or charging commands to the charging stations.
Creating Smart Chargin profiles is mainly used for load balancing, peak shaving, cost-based optimizations, and similar to avoid gaps between charge plans and actual EV power consumption.
A smart EV charging energy management system with smart charging profiles helps the electrical infrastructure to” flatten the curve” of energy demand.
Troubleshooting
As we mentioned at the beginning and in our blog on EV charging industry trends, not working charging stations are becoming more and more of a problem.
It is one thing to build them, but managing them properly is a whole different game.
Troubleshooting is the next level of monitoring.
A Smart EV charging station management system must manage large amounts of real-time data coming from the charging stations and quickly recognize any issues with the chargers.
It must report any problematic units and start the automated troubleshooting processes.
The CPO can immediately check all the logs and analytics, and if possible, the fault can be solved via remote maintenance.
If the problem needs to be solved on-site, the system monitoring logs will provide the correct data to help find and solve the problem.
How to Select the Right EV Charging Station Management System?
When choosing the right electric vehicle charging station management system, you must ensure the operating system is open and scalable, with no vendor lock-in.
Also important, it should support advanced EV Charging Billing to enable proper monetization of your business.
Of course, it needs to support cloud connectivity and OCPP protocol, and for even more flexibility, the system needs to support API-based external development.
As we mentioned, e-mobility is on the rise.
Even if a Charge point operator starts small, with the right EV charging business model, it will grow.
To support this growth, you need a proven and tested electric vehicle charging station management system to support a growing business in any market in the world you decide to be present.
Tridens Smart EV charging station management system is a proven and tested white-label solution that will support your business with no limitations in size or location.
