How to deploy low-cost smart EV charging with Daloop
By Jane Hoffer, CEO of Daloop
As adoption of electric vehicles continues to rise, there is one fundamental truth: EVs must be charged. But how can you weigh the value of your limited budget and finite number of parking spaces against the need to provide EV chargers?
The one thing you don’t want to do is over-invest and put tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of commercial charging station equipment in place to cover every single parking spot.
First off, charging equipment is expensive. Depending where you are in the world, the absolute minimum cost for a public charger – equipment only – can be as low as $500 per socket, but you also need to take into account the installation costs of cables, circuit boards and civil engineering. Installing 10 charging stations would probably cost you no less than $40,000, and that doesn’t include any fast chargers, which start at around $12,000 – with ultrafast hardware units going up to $50,000 – and installation coming in at around $5,000.
Secondly, EVs will have different charging demands based on their use. Most vehicles simply don’t need to be fast-charged at the last minute. For example, think of the most common use cases: an apartment complex, hospitals, universities, or transport hubs. Drivers can leave the vehicle to be charged overnight or during long-term stays—charging options that are less expensive.
Daloop’s low-cost, low-power solution
But what if you could use an off-the-shelf hardware that would create smart charging devices that bridge any parking spot and EVs with cloud-based management software?A low-cost smart device (as low as $50 per connection) could connect to standard electric outlets for charging EVs at low power, turning a basic connection into a charging station.
This kind of smart device also offers the most critical bells and whistles you need to manage a charging environment without the added hardware and infrastructure costs:
• remote on/off control
• consumption monitoring
• a scheduling and reservations system
• invoicing and reimbursement management
It’s also configurable, giving you options to offer EV charging in other ways:
• As a home-charging solution for employee fleets, able to differentiate between work and private usage and manage transactions and payments accordingly;
• To charge other electric vehicles such as e-bikes or scooters, tracking their associated consumption and costs; and for
• Connecting older, non-smart charging devices to the cloud to provide some measure of control and consumption monitoring and reporting without the huge investment of upgrading existing hardware.
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