Charge your EV smarter for faster return of value

As electric vehicles get more popular thanks to their efficient operation, the demand for smart and economic charging is also increasing. I am always looking for options for charging at the lowest rate not only when on the roads but also at home.

Just imagine a situation when you park your car at home after you return from work. You plug your car into the charger and have the option to charge the whole night, in some cases 12 hours. This time span is enough to fully charge the battery even with a slow charger.

Just plugging in your car and have no control over the charged time might not be the most economical solution as the electricity price differs during certain times.

Households can have various plans where the price for kWh of electricity used is changing in set intervals or randomly. I believe all owners of EVs would choose the option to charge when the electricity is the cheapest, which also has a big impact on faster return of cost of the car value.

With SMART charges this is possible, you plug in your vehicle and let the smart charger to manage the charging of your car and use only cheap electricity. In case you want to charge directly, switch to direct charging mode and the smart charging management will be switched off to charge the battery continuously until it is full. So a smart charger still gives you the options to charge constantly or in a more economical way.

The smart chargers will play an important role also in public charging, since combined with load balancing they are able to fully manage the charging when electricity is cheap and also when the grid is not overloaded.

Not to overload the grid is also an important aspect, since the electricity companies try to produce more energy from renewable sources and it is well known that such production is not able to cope with high peaks in electricity consumption and need to be covered from traditional sources. At the end this will have an impact on electricity prices, since when the demand is not evenly spread and is peaking during various times, the electricity providers have to invest more into flexible/traditional solutions to cover such high demands. Electricity prices will be reflecting this higher demand and additional investment, which in long run is not the direction we should go (higher kWh prices).

By being able to manage and to charge when the grid is not overloaded, it would be possible to flatten out the peaks and to achieve more even load to the grid. Therefore, the private SMART chargers located at workplaces (or where we spend more time), will play an important role, since at work we usually also have 8 hours of time available to charge the car, but we only need few hours if the battery is not fully empty.

We can let the smart charger to decide and manage the charging depending on electricity price and actual load on the network.

Such smart solutions would be a key in smart usage of electricity and sustainable EV growth, I do hope we will be seeing more and more smart chargers being installed at places where they would be creating additional value.