Electric vehicles are becoming more and more popular for many reasons. The ideal scenario for EV drivers is the convenience of parking their car at the end of the day, plugging it in, and waking up to a fully charged car. Let’s face it, charging a car at home is cheaper, easier, and far more convenient than trying to find a public charging point.
Although charging at home is convenient, it also brings some issues when regulating the power supply. An electric car is a high-energy application that can put an electrical circuit under strain if it’s not managed properly. This is where load balancing comes into play. We’ll take a closer look into what load balancing means and how you can benefit from it at home.
Electric circuits in the home have a limited capacity and could get overloaded if too much power is drawn at the same time. To stop this from happening, the electricity supply is fitted with circuit breakers that will cut the power if the energy exceeds safe levels. For instance, you may well have experienced this at home if you have had too many high-energy appliances running at the same time. A dishwasher, an oven, the washing machine, or a tumble dryer for example. Obviously, this can be avoided by only running certain appliances at certain times, but this could be inconvenient and disruptive.
Dynamic load balancing monitors power loads on your circuit and can therefore allocate any available capacity to the appliance that needs it the most. This allows them to run simultaneously without overloading the circuit.
Electric cars use a lot of energy compared to most household appliances. A home charge point can range from 7.4 to 22 kilowatts (kW) of power. In comparison, the average tumble dryer uses roughly 4.5 kWh per cycle.
The average daily consumption of an electric car is 0.316 kWh per mile. If the average miles driven per day in the UK is 19 miles, an electric car uses 6 kWh of electricity per day. This means that charging your electric car will add an extra 180 kWh to your energy consumption per month on average.
Often the answer is yes, as an electric vehicle adds a significant load to your household electrical circuit. Dynamic load balancing can prevent the need to upgrade your power supply by monitoring the loads on your circuit and adjusting the power drawn by your electric car to ensure it never uses more than a safe maximum.
Dynamic load balancing monitors the changes in energy use on your circuit and automatically allocates any available energy to different household appliances. For instance, if you are running multiple appliances during peak times when the demand for energy is higher, dynamic load balancing may slow down the charging of your vehicle or stop it completely to free up space for the other appliances. If the usual household appliances are turned off, the charging of your EV will continue as usual.
If you have multiple electric vehicles and are charging them at the same time, dynamic load balancing will automatically distribute the energy between the two vehicles and will prioritise a vehicle based on your preferences.
Not all EV charge points are equipped with dynamic load balancing which is why we would always recommend downloading the Fuuse app. The easy-to-use interface enables you to control and manage multiple charge points for your business or at home.
If you have any questions about load balancing, get in touch with us on 01621 868 138 or email us at info@pluganddrive.uk.
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Image by rawpixel.com on Freepik
Photo by César Baciero: https://www.pexels.com/photo/monochrome-photo-of-hybrid-car-charging-8349487/
