Peak Shaving in EV Charging

Utilities need to cover the cost of maintaining and upgrading the electrical grid, especially handling peak loads, which require larger capacity generation, transmission, and distribution systems. Energy providers charge commercial and industrial users different electric rates to encourage customers to manage and reduce their peak demand, thereby promoting more balanced and efficient use of the electrical grid.

Such demand charges are typically based on your highest level of grid use during a billing period. While these fees can greatly impact electricity expenses, EV charge point operators (CPOs) and fleets who optimize their charging operations through strategies such as peak shaving can minimize utility energy demand charges by using resources more efficiently.

What is peak shaving in EV charging?

Peak shaving, also known as load shedding or peak load shedding, is an energy management strategy to minimize short-term spikes in demand. Since demand charges are calculated based on the highest level of power demand (measured in kilowatts), peak shaving strategies in EV charging involve “shaving” your highest levels of electric vehicle site electricity usage to smooth energy consumption from the grid during popular periods to avoid or reduce high fees as grid operators work to balance electricity supply.

Peak shaving in EV charging reduces peak electricity demand through either demand-side or supply-side management. Demand-side management involves curbing energy use through approaches such as limiting power to EV chargers or turning off industrial machinery that isn’t critical. Supply-side management focuses on using local energy sources, like solar, batteries, or backup generators, to reduce reliance on the grid during peak periods. These methods can be used separately or together to lower the load on the grid connection point to shave peaks and improve overall energy efficiency.

Peak shaving is beneficial for both utilities and EV site owners as it helps avoid grid congestion, improve reliability, and lower electricity bills.

EV Peak shaving vs load shifting?

While peak shaving and load shifting are both techniques for managing electricity demand, they have distinct applications. Peak shaving is about reducing peak demand to level out overall power consumption in the short term. Load shifting not only temporarily reduces grid consumption but also moves it to times when grid demand and power prices are lower.

• Peak shaving in EV charging seeks to reduce the maximum power demand during peak periods, which helps lower demand charges and alleviate stress on the grid. At an EV charging site, this could involve using batteries to store electricity during off-peak hours and then discharging the energy during peak times to power the EV chargers. It could also involve taking demand response measures where certain EV chargers are temporarily suppressed or shut off during peak periods. This ensures that the site’s total demand does not exceed a certain threshold to minimize the impact on the grid and reduce peak-related energy costs.

 

• Load shifting involves moving the demand for electricity from peak periods to off-peak times without necessarily reducing the total amount of energy consumed. EV charging sites might consider incentivizing customers to charge their vehicles overnight or during other low-demand periods through time-of-use (TOU) pricing or other means. Smart charging infrastructure can also help shift loads by scheduling charging sessions for times when overall demand on the grid is lower. While peak shaving focuses on reducing peak demand, load shifting aims to optimize the timing of energy usage. This helps balance the load more evenly throughout the day to potentially take advantage of lower electricity rates during off peak times.

Together, peak shaving and load management help optimize electricity usage and enhance the efficiency of EV charging sites while reducing strain on the electrical grid to prevent overloads and minimize the need for additional power generation capacity. It’s a win-win for customers and grid operators alike.

How can peak shaving benefit EV charging site operators?

Most companies tend to have main activities that demand a lot of power such as heating boilers or turning on heavy machinery. For CPOs and fleet owners, that’s charging electric vehicles. Peak shaving can help cut down the maximum power demand for EV charging during peak hours to offer a number of benefits to businesses.

• Lower operating expenses: Peak loads can be detrimental for businesses. Lowering peak demand can reduce operating costs. Aligning your charging operations with power grid conditions allows adjusting the charging rate or scheduling charging sessions to avoid charging during peak periods. This can result in substantial energy cost savings over time.
• Avoid pricey upgrades: Managing grid demand is essential for minimizing the need for costly infrastructure upgrades. Peak shaving allows efficient allocation of electrical power to charging stations. More evenly distributing your charging load throughout the day optimizes existing electrical infrastructure.
• Manage capacity: Peak shaving allows better management of fleet charging schedules, ensuring that vehicles are charged efficiently without exceeding power limits. This make sure that all vehicles are adequately charged without causing spikes in demand.
• Achieve sustainability initiatives: Optimizing energy usage and incorporating renewable energy sources (such as solar power stored in batteries) allows reducing your reliance on the grid during peak times. This supports sustainability goals and reduces carbon footprints.
• Improve efficiency: Using smart charging systems and battery storage can help manage energy loads more effectively. This leads to smoother operations and can extend the lifespan of charging infrastructure by avoiding overloading.
• Contribute to a reliable grid: Peak shaving helps in stabilizing the power grid by reducing the load during high-demand periods. This can lead to more reliable power supply and prevent potential grid overloads or blackouts.

Tips for successful peak shaving in EV charging

Peak shaving can have many advantages if done well. Here are a few things to think about when developing your energy management strategy.

Consider your load profile and site goals

It’s important to start by understanding your energy consumption patterns over time and how your utility bill is affected by your load profile. Commercial and industrial businesses track consumption surges using a registered load profile, a detailed record from the local utility that shows how much electricity is used over a specific period of time. This profile is typically created with data from smart meters that record energy usage at regular intervals (such as every 15 minutes or hourly).

Then, define your business goals and determine how your site’s electricity traffic needs to change to achieve them. By analyzing your load profile, charge point operators can identify when and why these surges occur, allowing them to implement strategies like peak shaving to manage their energy use more effectively.

Choose the right technology

Investing in a battery energy storage system to contain excess energy during off-peak times can be valuable in reducing peak demand charges. Stored energy can be used during peak demand periods to power EV chargers, reducing reliance on the grid. Pairing a battery with onsite solar also allows generating and storing your own sustainable energy on-site to use for peak shaving.

Also, investing in a smart energy management system can help direct when EV chargers use power and from what source (the grid, solar, battery, etc.) to dynamically adjust charging rates based on real-time grid demand, electricity prices, and overall site goals. This helps automatically distribute the energy load to avoid peak periods while making the site less costly to operate and more profitable.

Continuously monitor and adjust

Businesses should continuously monitor their peak shaving strategies and be ready to make adjustments as needed to ensure that they are managing demand patterns and chaning grid conditions successfully.

Also, know that you don’t have to go at it alone. It can help to work with utilities and get customers on board to perfect your peak shaving practices. Communicating closely with the utility can provide valuable data and resources that can help in understanding grid conditions and getting support for implementing peak shaving measures. Likewise, educating EV customers or fleet drivers about the benefits of charging during off-peak hours and even providing incentives for doing so will encourage them to participate in load management efforts.

How do smart energy management systems make peak shaving simpler?

Energy management systems can help align your business operations with grid conditions, ensuring your on-site batteries charge before and deploy during your peak demand periods to reduce your grid consumption and avoid extra energy costs for the highest profit margins.

For example, Sparkion’s SparkCore™ energy management system (EMS) intelligently analyzes energy consumption patterns to anticipate and automatically mitigate peak power demand spikes in real-time. As soon as an electrical vehicle site reaches a specific threshold, the EMS performs peak load shaving by discharging battery storage energy to avoid peak demand charges. The timing and power of the battery’s electricity release is determined by the site’s discharge factor, which is based on real-time site energy usage and the amount of energy in the on site batteries. In this way, Sparkion’s AI-driven technology ultimately increases the profit margin for each simultaneous charging session.

The SparkCore™ EMS draws power from the battery according to each site’s particular power grid limit—the power value that the site is allowed to consume considering its breaker rating and total potential peak loads. Sparkion can act according to your personalized site preferences and automatically pull the additional power from your battery energy storage system when needed so you’ll never go over your grid limit, allowing you to control utility energy costs and increase profits.

Benefits of peak shaving in EV charging with Sparkion include:

• Optimize peak shaving
• Control operating costs
• Avoid expensive upgrades
• Increase profit margins

The future of EV peak shaving

More EV CPOs are embracing peak shaving for financial reasons as well as to comply with changing energy regulations. Also, as governments and regulators increasingly focus on grid reliability and reducing carbon emissions, new policies and market mechanisms will emerge to incentivize energy management. Time-of-use pricing, demand response programs, and other financial incentives will become more common, encouraging wider adoption of peak shaving practices.

In fact, in some areas, homeowners are already encouraged to watch their energy usage during peak periods or face tariffs themselves in the name of grid stability. As rooftop solar and home battery systems become more common, such distributed energy resources (DERs) will encourage more consumers to participate in peak shaving too. When all these DERs are aggregating together, they can create virtual power plants that can also support the grid during peak times to increase its resilience.

While we have yet to see where regulations lead, the future of peak shaving is sure to evolve significantly with technological advancements, changing energy markets, and increasing demand for sustainable energy. For instance, as batteries become more efficient, cost-effective and energy-dense, businesses and grid operators will have more storage capacity for peak shaving. Integrating energy storage with growing renewable energy sources like solar and wind will become a more common tactic for EV charging peak shaving, reducing reliance on traditional fossil fuel power plants.

Internet of Things (IoT) and artificial intelligence (AI) will also influence energy management. Smarter grids will enable more accurate and automated peak shaving by dynamically managing energy flows and optimizing heavy equipment for real-time adjustments in light of demand and grid conditions. Meanwhile, machine learning will help predict peak demand by analyzing data and electronically adjusting energy usage, storage, and generation to mitigate it.