Here are some of the most Frequently Asked Questions on Smart charging!
Offline charge stations
Does smart charging still work if a charge station (temporarily) goes offline?
When a charge station is added to a smart charging group we send out a so called offline profile. Through this profile we ensure that in case the charge station goes offline, it will fall back to safe charging capacity. Even in the event that all charge stations go offline at the same time, EV drivers are still able to charge without overloading the circuit breaker!
Local meters
I only want to do building optimisation, why do I need to install a second meter to measure the charge stations?
The grid meter measures the load of the entire building, including the load of the charge stations. In order to know the building consumption, the consumption of the charge stations must be subtracted from what the grid meter measures. Since the grid meter measures the load per phase, the load of the charge stations must also be known per phase to do a proper substraction. The latter is not possible without having a meter that measures the load of the charge stations per phase.
I want to use building optimisation and phase optimisation simultaneously. Why do I have to choose between them?
Building optimisation automatically includes phase optimisation.
Shouldn't I also place a meter to measure the solar panels?
No. The effect of the solar panels will be measured at grid level.
When applying building optimisation, will the data be processed fast enough to prevent an overload?
The Smappee metering data is normally collected every minute (not faster, in order to prevent too high data consumption). As soon as the data consumption of the entire building is higher than 90% of the Power Supply Maximum, the metering data will be collected every 5 seconds, until the building consumption is below 90% again. The delay in getting data from Smappee meters to the Smappee Cloud to the GreenFlux cloud is less than a second.
The worst case situation that could occur is that a building uses no power at all and the charge stations use 100% of the available power (not a very likely scenario, but it could happen). Then within only 1 to 3 seconds, the building goes form 0% load to 100% load (this is very unlikely to happen). In this very unlikely worst case scenario, the building load would be 200% of what the circuit breaker can handle. Given the circuit breaker's characteristics, even in this extreme situation, it takes about 30 to 120 seconds before the circuit breaker actually trips. No matter what the circuit breaker's actual characteristics are, no ciruit breaker will ever instantaneously trip at an overload of 200%. Given that the GreenFlux system will always respond to such an event in maximum 6 seconds, this is always fast enough. Note that a more likely overload is in the order of a few percentages, which requires response times of ~30 minutes to prevent tripping.
I have a site where there is only a single phase grid. Should I apply phase optimisation?
No, this won't have any impact. Keep in mind though that if building optimisation is applied, this still requires a meter that measures the consumption of the charge stations.
I have a site where there are only single phase charge stations, but the local electricity grid is a three phase grid. Should I apply phase optimisation?
That is a possibility. An alternative is that three different capacity groups are created, since basically there are three isolated circuits at the location. The latter does require a very reliable registration of which charge station is connected to which phase. For robustness (also in light of potential future changes to the electrical installation), using a local meter to automatically determine and keep track of the grid topology might be the better option is this case.
I want to use local meters, but I would prefer to work with another meter supplier, is this possible?
No. There is no standard interface for the smart charging interface as shown in Figure 6 in Section 4.4. Adding other meter suppliers is therefore not a matter of plug and play.
Where can I find the installation instructions for the Smappee hardware?
These are provided by Smappee. Please check the Smappee website.
Why can I not buy the meters from GreenFlux?
GreenFlux only delivers cloud technology. Hardware (both charge stations and meters) must be purchased at the hardware supplier.
One of the Smappee meters is broken. What should I do now?
If a submeter or Smappee Genius is broken, it can simply be replaced and re-registered in the Smappee system. There is no reconfiguration necessary in the GreenFlux system. This is because once the initial setup has been done, GreenFlux will automatically be notified by Smappee on any (hardware-)changes at the location. Historical data will also just remain visible.