What is Load Balancing?

1. What is Load Balancing?

Load Balancing is the distribution of power between the different points of consumption. In other words, Monta automatically divides the available power over the vehicles that are charging.

Monta's system analyses the available capacity and how much power the vehicles require. Subsequently, power is distributed based on the maximum capacity of the connection. With the system, electric vehicles can always be charged, even if the installation has a limited capacity. Thus, no expensive investments have to be done in a more powerful installation.

Please note that Load Balancing is only available for those who have a charge point operator agreement with Monta with a Pro, Business or Enterprise plan.

In this guide you will learn about the concepts that comprise the Load Balancing system in Monta. We recommend reading the guide and getting familiar with the different terms and requirements. You may have to contact your installer with questions regarding the installation of the charge point site, before you can safely create and populate a Load Balancing Group.

2. Load Balancing Group

A Load Balancing Group is a set of charge points, located on the same site, which need a managed power distribution between them. 

This is not the same as a Charge point Site. All charge points that are included in a Load Balancing Group need to share the same charge point Site. However, not all charge points available on the charge point Site need to be included in the Load Balancing Group.

3. Load Balancing Sub-group

A subset of charge points, sharing the same available amps on the site. Sub-groups were designed to be used on sites where you have fuses on different levels. 

You can have a main fuse with 100 amps on the physical charge point site and 3 sub-fuses with 40 amps each. With Monta’s Sub-groups you can utilize the capacity on every level, without risking to exceed any of the fuse limits. 

4. Power distribution

Power distribution is the way the system is going to divide the available power between the charge points / vehicles charging. Power distribution can only be set on a Group level and will be applied to all Sub-groups.

For both power Equal share and First Come, First Served there are two properties that always hold:

• If the site is not at full capacity every car will charge at full speed.
• If more cars are present than what can be served the remaining cars will be put in a queue depending on their arrival order.

Equal Share

Power will be distributed equally among all charging cars on a site. This means that as more cars arrive the charging speed of earlier cars may be lowered.

First Come, First Serve

With this distribution, the system will prioritize the cars that started charging first on the charge point site, and will give the most power to the first car. Any unused Amps will be allocated to the next car, and so forth. This means that as more cars arrive the charging speed of earlier cars will be unaffected.

Locally managed - Easee

This setup can be used only for Easee charge point sites with an external Enegic meter. This will allow for the meter updates from Enegic to be passed to the Easee cloud and  charge points via Monta. If you select this type of power distribution, you will not be able to create Sub-groups or configure the advanced Load Balancing settings of charge points on the site. You can find a detailed guide on how to set up a Locally managed group here.

5. Meter settings

These are the settings of a meter that reports current measurements independently of what charge points report. Usually installed in the fuse cabinet. 

Meter Type

Select the meter type which is connected to your setup. Currently we support ABB Modbus or Enegic.

Placement

The placement of the meter indicates whether it measures the used amps, including or excluding the charge points. This will affect the calculation of the dynamic buffer needed for the Load Balancing Group. 

Dynamic buffer

A safety buffer to ensure that we are not exceeding the total capacity when the building’s consumption changes. This value should be at least as large as the highest expected increase in the building’s consumption within one minute (the default fallback timeout).

Fail-safe amps

If the meter connection is lost and Monta cannot get an updated state of how many amps the charge points are using on the site, we will distribute the fail-safe amps among the charge points. 

6. Adding charge points

Here are some notes on how you can add charge points to your site.

• You must manually select to add the charge points from the charge point site from the “Add or remove charge points” section.
• You can only add charge points brands and models that are supported for Load balancing in the Monta system. You can find a list of support Load Balancing here. 
• You can add both connected or passive charge points, but they need to have a serial number included in the Monta system. 

7. Advanced options

After you have added the charge points to the Load Balancing Group, you will see additional configuration options, which you can apply. 

State

Charge point status could be Available, Occupied ( SuspendedEV, SuspendedEVSE, Finishing), Preparing, Charging, Failing (Faulted and Unavailable).

Phase order

Monta’s Load Balancing system can be phase aware. This means that we measure the consumption of all 3 phases separately. This allows us to optimize the utilization of the phases’ capacity, by applying phase rotation to the Load Balancing group. 

With phase rotation, each charge point is connected to the 3 main phases in a different way by rotating the phases 1 step every time. When a car plugs in to charge, it can start charging on 1 or more phases, depending on the type of car. With phase rotation, when a second car plugs in, our system will evaluate the use of the charge point and the new car can start charging on another phase, if it is available. This way, instead of one car blocking all phases, they can be utilized according to the charging needs of the cars connected. 

The phase rotation can be set by setting the phase order. The rotation is something that is configured physically by the installer by the way the wires are connected in the charge point. It is not possible to change the actual phase rotation by updating some configuration values in the Monta backend. Instead the phase rotation values must be set according to the information the installer provides.

Prioritize

If you select to prioritize a charge point, this will be applied when distributing the current among the charge points in use. If you toggle on the prioritization, this charge point will be the first ones to receive current to start charging. If you select not to prioritize any charge points, it will charge normally.

8. How do I set up Load Balancing with Monta?

• Check out Monta's supported Load Balancing setups
• If needed make a request for us, detailing about your charge point setup
• Set up Load Balancing in the Monta Portal