Electric Vehicle Charging in the Ferroamp System

Charging the electric car should be both easy and cheap. However, the possibility of charging the car is limited by the power supply, which in turn is determined by the size of the connection to the electricity grid. 

If a phase in the electrical system is overloaded, the main fuse blows, something that many homeowners have experienced when, for example, they have tried to charge the car while running the tumble dryer or some other electricity-intensive appliance in the household.

More stable charging with phase balancing

The Ferroamp system’s active phase balancing distributes the current evenly between the three phases in the power lines and thus creates more space inside the main fuse. That way, the main fuse is protected and you can charge the car without affecting other loads in the property.

Many charging boxes today are equipped with load balancing or power monitors. They can also be set to protect the main fuse but then with the difference that charging is interrupted, slowed down or simply does not start if the load on a single phase becomes too high. With phase balancing, you get a more stable charge.

Dynamic load balancing

In larger properties, many people today pay power tariffs, something that electricity grid owners are now increasingly introducing in properties with smaller main fuses such as villas.

Power tariffs mean that the hour or hours during a month when the electricity consumption in a property is at its highest becomes decisive for the network fee. This can make the long power peaks that can be created by electric car charging costly.

With power tariffs, load balancing becomes important because phase balancing does not reduce the power draw itself. If the charging box is integrated with the Ferroamp system, you get access to a dynamic load balancing that takes into account the property’s total power output.

Instead of setting a power level that the electric car charging must not exceed, the Ferroamp system can control the charging according to how the load looks like in the rest of the property, which means that when the consumption in the rest of the property is low, you can charge at a higher speed without going over it set power limit.  

Integration via OCPP

Integration of the electric car charger with the Ferroamp system takes place via the communication standard (Open Charge Point Protocol). It is a standard that enables different types of systems to control and integrate charging stations in a network. You can therefore control electric car charging in Ferroamp’s cloud service EnergyCloud together with battery storage and solar cells.

In addition to phase and load balancing, you can then also set the charging to only charge at night, when the electricity from the grid is cheapest, or to only charge when there is an excess of solar electricity in the property.