cFos Charging Manager - Load management for electric car charging

The cFos Charging Manager is aimed at operators of car parks that are to be equipped with EVSEs for charging electric cars. The aim is to provide as much charging power as possible to the individual electric cars by means of load management, taking into account the available total power - often even without having to increase the existing house connection power.

Note: We are currently experiencing an increased number of enquiries from owners' associations, apartment buildings and associated jointly used garages/parking spaces. Since it is often unclear to interested parties what the first steps in implementing a load management system look like, here is a planning aid for parking garages and a practical example of an underground garage.

Previous solutions are expensive and usually limited to a specific EVSE provider. A manufacturer-independent system offers investment security.

The cFos Charging Manager allows you to set up your charging infrastructure according to your wishes. For this purpose, the cFos Charging Manager supports a range of EVSEs from different manufacturers by means of load management. We are constantly working to expand the list of supported EVSEs.

To plan your charging infrastructure, first select the EVSEs you want. For large systems, the individual EVSEs should be as inexpensive as possible so that the total costs remain manageable. For this reason, the cFos Charging Manager also supports low-cost models and then makes any missing functionality of the EVSE available elsewhere.

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Billing and Authentication

OCPP EVSEes, as well as many other EVSEs, have built-in electricity meters that the cFos Charging Manager can read and provide the consumed kilowatt hours for billing. With simpler EVSEs, you can install your own meter. We recommend installing your own Modbus for networking the intermediate meters.

For authentication, OCPP EVSEs typically have an RFID reader. Many other models also have their own RFID reader. In this case, you teach these EVSEs new RFID cards. Then these EVSEs check the RFID card and activate the charging process automatically. The cFos Charging Manager remains informed about the charging process and can regulate the charging power.

For EVSEs without their own RFID reader, release can be done via a Web interface of the cFos Charging Manager by entering a PIN. You can also connect an RFID reader to the cFos Charging Manager or network it with one or more RFID readers. The cFos Charging Manager then takes over authorization and release of the EVSEs. Mixed operation of EVSEs with and without RFID readers is also possible

Control of charging power

The cFos Charging Manager uses load management to try to distribute the maximum connected load installed in the building as well as possible among the electric cars to be charged. The cFos Charging Manager calculates the available charging power every few seconds, as follows:
House connection power minus consumers in the house (e.g. flats or machines) plus generators (e.g. solar system).
or
Mains supply (positive for supply, negative for feed-in) minus charging power of the EVSE. A bidirectional meter is recommended here.

To record consumption (and generation), Modbus-capable intermediate meters must be installed:
Either you install an intermediate meter for each consumer and generator or you install a central meter at the house connection. In both cases, the cFos Charging Manager reads out the meters via Modbus (we recommend the ABB B23 112-100 with direct measurement for powers up to 40kW and the ABB B24 112-100 with transformer measurement with corresponding transformer coils for higher powers. Both can be read out well via Modbus RTU. The cFos Charging Manager also supports many other meters, see table"Which metercan do what?".

Many intermediate meters output so-called S0 pulses (e.g. 1000 pulses per kWh). The cFos Charging Manager can also evaluate these pulses per counter using a USB FTDI adapter

By recording consumption and generation, the cFos Charging Manager always knows how much charging power to distribute to the EVSEs in use. You can assign different priorities to the individual EVSEs. The available charging power is first distributed to the EVSEs of higher priority and the remaining power is then distributed to the EVSEs of lower priority. This way you can, for example, quickly recharge emergency vehicles while long parked users are "refuelled" during the day

The prioritisation scheme also supports the temporary shutdown of wallboxes if the minimum charging power is undercut. There is also phase symmetry monitoring to prevent individual phases from being loaded beyond the level prescribed by the VDE during single-phase charging.

Loading rules

For load management, several charging rules can be configured per user and per wallbox, which determine the charging power according to certain criteria. This can be used, for example, to configure certain times at which the charging power is limited.

In addition, the charging power can be changed depending on a switching input, for example if the energy supplier thereby signals certain tariffs. Another possibility is to control the charging power depending on the available generation power of a solar system (e.g. through surplus charging).

Material list

• Wall boxes and cabling
• 1 Raspberry PI 3 or 4 plus power supply unit or Windows PC
• One USB ⭤ RS485 adapter (FTDI, virtual COM port) per Modbus RTU
• Intermediate counter
• Additional FTDI adapters for S0 counters
• additional RFID readers for cFos Charging Manager (may require additional Raspberry PI)

It is recommended that the cFos Charging Manager is connected to the internet and accessible from "outside" for maintenance purposes.

cFos Charging Manager prices

• Licence per charging point: From €109 (excl. VAT) or €129.71 (incl. 19% VAT)

Detailed price list for the cFos Charging Manager and hardware kits

System requirements

• Windows 10 or Raspberry Pi 3 or 4.
• Recommended: Internet connection for automatic time setting, software updates and access for remote maintenance. If there is no landline connection, you can also use an LTE router with SIM card.

Details for the network operator

Manufacturer's declaration