Multifamily properties, office buildings, and other commercial real estate—they’re all environments where people are scratching their heads trying to figure out how to get EV chargers installed.
With most buildings approaching the limits of their electrical capacity, it’s a hard prospect. Upgrades are expensive. But the move to electric cars is happening fast, and demand is growing with it. Soon, it will be an expectation that buildings offer charging for use by tenants and guests.
The solution? EV charging that incorporates load management technology. This makes it possible to reduce or eliminate the need for expensive upgrades to deliver a great charging solution, and generally offers huge savings.
Here’s a closer look at this tech and how SWTCH and New Times Square were able to put it to work to shave $24,000 off the price of a condo retrofit installing 21 EV chargers.
What is Load Management for EV Chargers?
The magic of load management is found in the way it reduces the energy sent either to a panel or to a circuit, and that it does so based on the current electrical demand.
This is commonly used to install up to four EV chargers along a single circuit. When multiple chargers are in use, the load management technology will ensure that they split the current between each other safely and evenly. This makes it possible to install more EV chargers without the same level of electrical upgrades required to make them all work.
In some applications, it can reduce the amount of current used by the EV chargers (or stop drawing altogether) based on the overall demand in the building. If HVAC and other systems are pulling a lot of juice, EV charging load management can delay charging up the cars until there’s more capacity. It’s a great way to avoid excess demand charges when the average EV only needs 3-4 hours of charge to get topped up.
To make this tech work, you need a metering device to keep track of electricity consumption, EV chargers that are capable of participating in load management, and charging software that works behind the scenes to take input from the meter and translate that into commands to the chargers to slow, stop, or restart charging as needed.
How load management made EV charging possible for New Times Square in Toronto
When New Times Square decided to install EV chargers for use by its tenants, they quickly ran into the same challenge faced by most buildings built 20 or more years ago: the building was simply not built with the capacity for EV chargers to be added.
The standard approach to addressing this is to throw a ton of money at immense upgrades that allow enough electrical capacity for chargers to be installed and to deliver all the power drivers would require. The smarter approach, the one taken by New Times Square with the help of SWTCH, was to add only what was absolutely necessary to make the chargers work and to use intelligent load management behind the scenes to work around infrastructure limitations.
In order to achieve the necessary capacity, two 200 Amp panels were installed, as well as two 75 kVA transformers. Once these pieces were in place, the building was able to install 21 EV chargers available for private use by EV drivers living in the building.
But the upgrades paired with the software actually allow for 40 EV chargers to be operated at the property without any negative impact on the building or any demand charges being incurred. This means that as the number of EV drivers at the building grows over the next few years, the property owners will be able to accommodate the demand and only need to look at further upgrades once there are nearly twice as many EV drivers in the building as there are today.
Is it possible to accomplish this without load management technology? Yes. But it would cost at least an additional $24,000 in infrastructure upgrades. It would also mean operating with less flexibility; without load management, the chargers could not account for the building’s overall load when determining how much current to send to connected cars.
Accessible, high-quality EV charging doesn’t have to break the bank
Aside from the obvious benefits to property owners, there’s something important to note about load-managed EV charging: tenants and guests won’t know the difference.
Because most drivers will arrive, plug in their car, and only unplug when it’s time to leave again—either the next morning, at the end of the work day, or after spending a few hours at your location—it doesn’t matter if a charger is moderating the amount of charge being delivered to a car. All the driver sees is a nice increase to the state of charge of their battery when they next hop into their car.
What this means is that there’s no need to settle for systems that don’t offer this flexibility. In adopting EV charging systems that include load management, it’s possible to make your properties a part of the new world of electrified transportation and to do so without exorbitant impacts to your bottom line.
At New Times Square and in many other properties across North America, this same technology is being deployed to meet new tenant demands and develop a key competitive edge. Because increasingly, tenants are demanding that the places they live and work offer EV charging for their benefit. Those that do offer it will have an easier time attracting and retaining these same tenants; those that don’t are likely to find themselves losing out before too long.
Want to learn more about EV load management and how it can work for your property?
Check SWTCH’s load management solution, and get in touch with them to learn how load management can work for your property.
Read more: Property Owners Save $24,000 Installing EV Chargers with Load Management.