It will soon become apparent when you buy your first EV that there’s a few phrases used that you’ve never heard before. Dynamic Load Balancing is one of those phrases that some people will have to deal with when looking at installing an EV charge point at home.
In essence this is a facility which monitors the overall electrical usage in your property and adjusts the power going to the EV charge point accordingly. So if you have a total capacity of 60amps and at busy times of the day the rest of your appliances are using 50amps the load balancer will ensure that the EV chargepoint is only able to use 10amps so as not to trip a fuse.
Then later, probably when everyone has gone to bed, and the household appliances are only drawing 20 amps, for instance, the load balancer will allow the EV chargepoint to draw up to 40 amps for slightly faster charging times.
A load balancer can also be used in properties which have dual charge points and want to charge two EVs at the same time. The system monitors the charging status of both vehicles and adjusts the power between chargepoints accordingly to make sure they both get an optimised supply.
For many homeowners this will not be required as the available power will be sufficient to cover all of the household appliances plus the EV chargepoint, but for houses with lower power a DLB (Dynamic Load Balancer) may be required.
For residential use a DLB is very unobtrusive and is usually mounted near to the main consumer unit (fusebox). For commercial use it could be more involved depending on the power available, the number of chargepoints being installed and the projected power usage statistics. Your installer will be able to advise you once they have carried out an inspection of your property.
A Dynamic Load Balancer (DLB) can also be used for homes fitted with Solar PV arrays and battery storage systems as it can monitor the power input from multiple sources and adjust accordingly.
The Hydra Zodiac domestic EV charger and all Hydra commercial, public and workplace EV chargers are available with wired or wireless DLB as an optional add-on.
