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At home in a private garage / drive way, or at a designated parking spot or shared parking facility (common for apartments).
At work at your office building’s parking facility, either reserved or (semi)public.
In public along streets, on the highway, and at any public parking facility you can think of – e.g. shopping malls, restaurants, hotels, hospitals etc.
How long it takes to charge your electric car really depends on the type of charging station and your car model. Driving style, traffic speed, and road conditions all have an impact on power consumption too.
The impact of braking
Similar to a car powered by fuel, an electric car consumes more power with fast acceleration and high speeds. When the brakes are hit slowly, the battery will recharge itself with ‘braking energy’. After approximately 50% of the charging time, the battery will already be charged 80%. The battery can also be charged in the interim.
The last 20% of the battery is filled via drip charging. This is a slow method of charging to secure the lasting quality of the battery.
The impact of in-car features
Music players and lights have a very limited impact on the power consumption/range. The weight of the luggage and the number of people your car is carrying however, have an impact on the range. Heating/air conditioning also has a considerable impact on the range (up to 50%). Many electric cars, however, can be pre-heated or cooled while they are connected to the charging station, thereby not draining the battery.
Just like regular electricity outlets, charging stations may have different outlets and connectors depending on the country where you’re charging and your car’s brand. Luckily, to make it things less complicated, car manufacturers have now cut it down to two types of outlets and connectors for you to keep in mind. From the car’s side, a Type 1 socket is common for Japanese and American vehicles, and a Type 2 socket is common for European vehicles. Note: Tesla models the US are equipped with a specific type of socket, whereas European Tesla models carry Type 2 sockets.
Smart Charging is an umbrella term that defines all intelligent functionalities in our charging stations that optimize the charging infrastructure by creating and distributing the available power in an efficient and flexible manner. With Smart Charging, not only would you avoid unnecessary costs such as overcapacity fees, but you’ll also get the most out of your charging stations in case of limited power capacity — wherever, whenever.
Load Balancing
Load Balancing is an indispensable Smart Charging feature for those that operate a charging station with dual sockets or multiple charging stations at a specific location.
Operating a charging station requires your power source (e.g. office building) to carry the cumulative sum of the total capacity of these charging stations. Load Balancing distributes the available capacity proportionally over all active charging stations. In doing so, Load Balancing ensures that optimal charging is provided to all electric vehicles at your location, within the limits of your charging stations’ capacity.
Sample scenario:
Your building has 25A available. In your parking lot, you own a BusinessLine Charging Station with dual sockets that have a maximum of 32A available. When the first car charges at your charging station, this is done at 25A — the maximum capacity that your building allows. As soon as a second car starts charging, the charging capacity will be distributed proportionally over these two cars. Both cars will now charge at 12.5A.
Hub / Satellite
Hub / Satellite is an indispensable Smart Charging feature for those who wish to operate multiple charging stations at a single location.
To save you time and effort, our Charging Station not only takes care of automatic settlements of charging transactions, it also conveniently gathers the data coming from all of your charging stations with our cloud-based management platform partners, Greenlots and EVConnect.
To function properly, BackOffice needs each charging station to communicate data to its system. This is where a Hub / Satellite configuration comes in handy. Instead of having each charging station communicating data individually (which would require each station to have its own built-in modem), Hub / Satellite enables up to 20 charging stations to communicate through a single modem.
This configuration saves you from unnecessary maintenance and multiple subscription plan costs. After all, there’s only a single modem to be fixed in any rare cases of malfunction, and there’s only one network subscription plan necessary to generate and manage data.
Sample scenario:
You have installed 3 BusinessLine Charging Stations with dual sockets at your parking facility. One of these three charging stations is the Hub station, to which all other stations (Satellites) are connected through a cable that runs underground. This cable enables each Satellite station to send its data to the Hub Station. The Hub station gathers all data and sends it to your network carrier. The carrier processes the data and creates essential insights into your charging sessions at all three stations.
Peak Shaving
During each charging session, your power consumption may run up to the maximum capacity available. This means that you will have to be careful when you switch on the washer or dryer. When you exceed your maximum capacity your network operator will charge you retrospectively for that. Peak Shaving helps to prevent this. As soon as you threaten to reach maximum capacity, our Charging Station will automatically reduce the consumption of a charging session, or even pause the sessions altogether until enough power becomes available.
Load Balancing
Load Balancing prevents overcapacity by distributing the available capacity equally over all charging points at a given location. This makes it an indispensable Smart Charging feature for anyone that operates multiple charging points at a location with limited power capacity. If this situation is applicable to you, EVBox and your installer can offer you this service.
Here’s how it works in practice:
- There are five charging points at this facility. There are four cars charging. This facility has 30 kW available in total. We always make use of the full capacity. So in this case, four cars start charging at 7.4 kW each.
- The fifth car enters and needs to charge at a minimum of 7.4 kW. This would require an availability of 37 kW in total. But we only have an availability of 30 kW in total. How do we solve this?
- We distribute the full available power, equally over the five cars. In this case, each car now starts charging at 6 kW. But the fifth car needs to charge at a minimum of 7.4 kW. So what happens next?
- Because we make use of the full capacity, the fifth car won’t be able to charge until one of the other cars stops charging. Rest assured, we found a solution to this problem.
Priority Load Balancing
Priority Load Balancing distributes the available capacity in a more flexible manner than the traditional Load Balancing. This means that the fifth car in the infographic above would now be able to start charging right away, even if the scenario remains exactly the same.
For the end-user, Priority Load Balancing influences the way the car’s charging, as well as the LED status indication and any in-app notifications that informs the end-user of his/her charging status.
Here’s how it works in practice:
- There are five charging points at this facility. There are four cars charging. This facility has 30 kW available in total. We always make use of the full capacity. So in this case, four cars start charging at 7.4 kW each.
- The fifth car enters and needs to charge at a minimum of 7.4 kW. This would require an availability of 37 kW in total. But we only have an availability of 30 kW in total. How do we solve this?
- We evaluate the charging status of each car within just two minutes. Now we can see that the second car has consumed the most, so we queue the second car to allow the fifth car to start charging. NOTE: If your car is queued, the LED ring flashes yellow. Your car app notifies you that your car has stopped charging. Don’t be alarmed, your car will start charging again shortly.
- Once every +/- 15mins, we evaluate the charging status of each car again. This time, we see that the first car is fully charged. So we release the second car from the queue and allow it to start charging again.