Predicting electricity consumption and charging electric vehicles effectively

Have you ever heard of a virtual electricity meter? The intelligent charging and energy management system IO-ELON makes it possible to track specific electricity consumption without an electricity meter. Energy demand at the site can be better predicted by means of energy demand forecasts, and the charging processes of the electric vehicle fleet can be aligned accordingly. In this article, we explain exactly how this works.

Virtual electricity meters with IO-ELON

An electricity meter is used to record delivered energy from an electrical supply network. Every household and business has an electricity meter that determines the electricity consumption of the location. If a company decides to electrify its vehicle fleet, appropriate charging infrastructure must be installed to charge the vehicles. The company's new charging park is equipped with an additional meter so that the consumption of energy for charging the electric vehicles can be correctly determined.

So we know how much electricity the site consumes overall and how much electricity the charging park consumes, but we do not have an electricity meter that counts the electricity consumption of the company building. We can only calculate the energy consumed by the building from the difference between the total electricity meter and the charging park electricity meter, but we do not have an accurate overview of the building electricity consumption.

Better planning of charging processes for electric vehicles

The charging and energy management software IO-ELON provides insight into building power consumption. Based on the total power consumption of the site and the power consumption of the charging fleet, the software anticipates the power behavior of the building and foresees the building power consumption. In the context of the use of electric vehicles in the fleet, this feature is of particular importance as these predictions are factored into the planning of charging operations for the electric vehicles.

Based on the predictions of the building's electricity consumption, IO-ELON decides in which time period it makes sense to charge electric vehicles (because at that time the building's electricity consumption is approximately low and electricity is available to charge the electric vehicles). In this way, electricity costs for the company can be reduced because charging processes are intelligently shifted to beneficial periods by the charging and energy management system. In particular, it is possible to identify upcoming bottlenecks and mitigate them by charging vehicles in advance.

Better insight into the energy management of the site

If you make use of this function, you benefit from the advantage that the power consumption at the company site can be better predicted, which means that charging processes for the electric vehicles can be better planned in terms of quality.

The power consumption for the charging park, the building, and the site can be viewed graphically in the IO-ELON dashboard. This means that even if no meter counts the building's power consumption, it can still be tracked through the graphical display and a forecast for the next 24 hours can be viewed based on the power consumption.