As more and more people install charging stations at home to charge their electric cars, sometimes people ask us whether they should upgrade the household’s main fuse in order to safeguard capacity in the home. You can, of course, do this, but there are more cost-effective alternatives, such as selecting load balancing for the charging station. Read more about how to streamline your everyday life with load balancing.
With load balancing, the charging station is aware at all times of how much power the home needs and ensures that what is left is used to charge the electric car. This ensures that you don’t have to worry about overloading any of the fuses. Other home electricity consumers such as the oven, washing machine and hairdryer are prioritised while the remaining power goes to your electric car. Everything takes place in a dynamic way that optimises both your charging and power consumption.
Frequent after-work peaks
It’s not uncommon for us to use a lot of power when we have just got home from work and put the gratin dish in the oven, and the little ones are watching children’s programmes on TV. It’s easy to underestimate how much electricity we consume on an everyday basis. Just consider, for example, that a normal electric kettle can consume 10 A when it is in use. The Swedish winter also contributes on many occasions to an increase in consumption. At such times, electric cars will charge a bit more slowly and instead charge at maximum power when there is capacity, such as during the night when we often have lower consumption.
Our load balancing solutions are easily configured to the size of the main fuse in the home, which allows you to avoid having to upgrade the main fuse while also avoiding any risk of overloading the home’s electrical system. Nor is it a problem if you would like to install more charging stations in the home in the future. Load balancing takes care of this and makes sure that everything is constantly adjusted and optimised to the home’s electricity consumption.
Amp Guard – a smart friend
Amp Guard from Charge Amps is a smart power monitor that is connected to our cloud service and handles 100 A straight from the box. It can also be upgraded to 400 A and works well along with solar panels.
By regularly retrieving measurement data, the measuring unit can provide crucial information on the current direction, voltage and phase angle. Although it’s possible to carry out load balancing without a measuring unit, you would then not receive any indications about external consumers such as the oven, dishwasher, tumble dryer and hairdryer.
Amp Guard can increase average potential power consumption in a detached house from 55 kWh per day to about 75 kWh per day by constantly optimising the charging current based on the consumption in the entire building. It can also efficiently balance consumption between several connected charging stations. Our smart cloud service then enables you to obtain real-time consumption reports.
With Amp Guard, we at Charge Amps have made it easy for you to optimise your consumption. You can regard Amp Guard as a smart friend who is constantly connected and at hand, ensuring that the everyday life of the household runs smoothly. With easy installation, a convenient cloud service and built-in intelligence, it becomes the heart of your smart home.
Read more about how Amp Guard can optimise your everyday life