Load balancing
Load balancing is important in case available power in a private home or common garage is limited, and there is a risk that the main fuse will blow during charging. ZmartCharge supports load balancing both in private homes and in common garages. Load balancing will reduce charging power in case there is a risk that the main fuse will blow.
Load balancing in private homes
Private homes have many devices that use a lot of electricity as by example heaters, washing machines, stoves, water heaters and much more. Often the main fuse is not dimensioned for adding a charger for an electric car. Many new cars are charging with 32A and by example in case your main fuse is 50A it becomes to little energy for the other devices in your home. Then there is a huge risk that the main fuse will blow when you charge your car. One way of solving this is to reduce the charger’s fuse in the app. But, then, the car will need many hours to charge, and since electricity often is cheap only a couple of hours every day you will not enjoy charging when the electricity is cheap.
The best solution is to install a load balancer unit in your meter in the fuse box as the images below shows. ZmartCharge will then, in real time, receive information about the usage of electricity in your home. In case the electricity consumption is getting close to what the main fuse can handle, ZmartCharge will reduce the charging power until the electricity consumption is reduced again. ZmartCharge will also handle load balancing between several chargers and the house in case you want to add more chargers.
What load balancer model shall I choose?
The load balancer is inserted in the meter in the fuse box as the above pictures show. Please note that you need to contact your electricity net company to have the data port in the meter opened. There are several brands of meters in use in Norway and you will need to check the brand and the model of the meter in your fuse box. Then you can look in the table below to see what load balancer model you shall choose for your meter. The meter brands in use in Norway are Kaifa/Nuri, Aidon and Kamstrup. We have 3 models of our load balancer that supports the following meter:
- Modell: Pow-U that supports the following meters: Aidon: 6483, 6474, 6475, 6476, 6477, 6479, 6584 and Politerm 831. Kaifa/Nuri: MA105H2E, MA304H3E, MA304H4, MA304T3, MA304T4, MA309M, MA110M and MA309M.
- Modell Pow-P1 that supports the following meters: Aidon: 6442, 6490, 6492 and 7410. Kamstrup: Omnia E-meter.
- Modell Pow-K that supports the following meters: Kamstrup: Omnipower 684xx2, Omnipower 684xx3, Omnipower 685xx2, Omnipower 685xx3, Omnipower 686xx1 and 382M.
Installation
After you have received the loadbalancer unit from us, and the electricity net company has opened the data port in the meter, you are ready to configure the load balancer in the ZmartCharge app. Please note that for configuration of the loadbalancer unit you will need to connect it to a separate power supply. Go to “My Places” in the app and choose the place you want to do load balancing on. Then choose to configure the loadbalancer. Below you will find a video on how to reset the loadbalancer unit in case you need to run setup one more time. You will need to run the process in the below video twice for resetting to factory default. Please note that you need to enter correct size of the main fuse on “my place” and also right size for the charger in “Charger Settings” for the load balancing to work.
Load balancing in common garages
Usually there is not a separate meter for the chargers in common garages. For this reason, we have designed a special version of load balancing for common garages. Here you will make a new place in the ZmartCharge app for every group of chargers connected to one main fuse for those chargers. In case you have 10 chargers sharing one main fuse you will make a new place with the name of this main fuse. Then you add all chargers belonging to this place. The administrator for this common garage installs all chargers on his app and give guest access to everyone that shall use the chargers. This is an additional feature where you need to buy 4G load balancing for each charger.
For everyone in a common garage to charge smart when electricity is cheap, we recommend that the main fuse for a group of chargers is minimum 80% of the estimated total consumption. Usually new cars only use 32A on one phase, and if you rotate the three phases that are connected to L1 in the charger, 3 cars will still only use 32A. In case you have 12 chargers we will assume the total consumption to be 96A. With an 80A main fuse for these charger and load balancing all cars will be able to charge smart when electricity is cheap.
