Nissan Leaf Charging

Electric cars are changing a lot more than just the auto industry. Everything from electric utilities to municipalities is worried that with an influx of electric cars the grid will be unable to handle the demand.

With these issues coming to light many of those same utilities and municipalities want some kind of demand response. Essentially, they want the ability to lessen the electrical demand during peak usage in order to prevent strain on the grid which can lead to brownouts or even blackouts. While this sounds like an absolutely necessary requirement, the reality is demand response isn't needed when you use EverCharge.

What Exactly Is Demand Response

Demand response is a change in the power consumption of an electric utility customer to match the demand for power with the supply. You see, electric energy cannot be easily stored, so utilities have traditionally matched demand and supply by throttling the production rate of their power plants, taking generating units on or offline, or importing power from other utilities as needed to match the demand. In essence, demand response seeks to adjust the demand for power instead of adjusting the supply.

What is demand response

The reasons for this are varied but the bottom-line is that for most appliances that pull larger amounts of power this is a pretty useful thing, especially in large densely populated areas. This was designed because most appliances are unable to understand the total demand for power and can easily strain the grid during peak times when most people are home.

So why is this not needed for electric car chargers with EverCharge?

Pretty simple actually.

Power Management eliminates the Need For Demand Response

Without Power Management
Credit: wattblock.com

EverCharge is unique in that we create a dynamic power management system. That system allows for each of our charging stations to communicate with each other and use power to its maximum efficiency. This allows us to install more chargers at any location but also eliminate expensive infrastructure additions so we can keep electric vehicle installs affordable. As great as this is it gets better.

Our friends over at Wattblock did a study in a 100 unit building that had 100% EV adoption with and without power management and the findings are pretty amazing. Leveraging our technology essentially eliminates the need for demand response. As you can see without power management demand peaked at 666kW (an unintentionally ominous number I'm sure), whereas using power management made peak demand a mear 447kW.

Power Management In Action
Credit: wattblock.com

This is the most extreme scenario of 100% EVs and one that will take years to fully achieve, yet it's clear to see that power management effectively eliminated the peak demand. Now imagine for a second that this wasn't just a single building leveraging EverCharge technology but rather an entire city. It's easy to see just how effective power management can be. So while demand response is a nice idea its one that's grounded in the past, companies like EverCharge have already future-proofed the grid public utilities and municipalties need to catch up.