EMS - Energy Management System
Energy management systems are the lynchpin of smart, interconnected charging and modern grid management. Let’s explore what an EMS is, and how it works
When you stop to charge your EV, have you ever thought about what’s going on behind the scenes to help transfer that power? Sending electricity from the energy grid to a charging station – and then from a charging station to a car battery – requires intelligent software and systems that manage and control the process from start to finish.
That’s the role of an energy management system (EMS) – the secret sauce behind successful, efficient electricity transfer and robust, reliable charging businesses. Here’s how it works…
What is an Energy Management System (EMS)?
EMS stands for Energy Management System, which is a software-based solution for optimising electricity usage between the energy grid and the end user.
Energy management systems aren’t limited to the world of EV charging; you’ll find them in pretty much any capacity where there’s a need to monitor and control electrical usage. That includes homes, factories, office buildings and entire communities. In the eMobility space, the term describes the software platform designed to manage energy flow for charging EVs.
Types of EMS:
CEMS
Community energy management systems monitor and control the energy draw for towns and cities, including public power uses like street lights.
BEMS
Building energy management systems work to manage the energy being used by larger-scale buildings – like residential apartments, offices or shopping malls.
HEMS
Your home has an energy management system too – it connects your home to the energy grid and ensures that your electricity usage is optimised.
FEMS
Factory energy management systems ensure that industrial facilities – which typically require a lot of power – don’t overload the energy grid.
Photovoltaics
This energy management system controls the flow of power coming from a solar source. This is useful for systems that use solar power as a supplementary energy supply, as it will optimally mix the power coming from each source.
Fuel Cell EMS
Fuel cell in this instance refers to batteries, which is the technology found in EVs. This is the official term for the Energy management system for electric car chargers
eMobility EMS’ optimise the amount of power being transferred to best suit the needs of the vehicles being charged, the charge point operator (CPO), and the energy grid. In practice, that’s a balancing act – drivers need efficient, fast charging while CPOs need to run cost-effective operations that don’t overstress the grid.
Handling that balance requires smart programming and highly optimised algorithms that constantly monitor and adjust power consumption and distribution. In a sense, an EMS acts as the brains behind successful EV charging – it’s what stops the connection between car and charger from being a simple on/off flow.
You can imagine it like this: if EV charging stations are like the radiators in your home, then an energy management system is analogous to your boiler and connected thermostat in that they monitor energy requirements and control the power output.
How does an EMS work?
An eMobility EMS is designed to handle several really important jobs across the full spectrum of charging – often at the same time. Here are an energy management system’s major responsibilities:
- Dynamic load management
One of the most important jobs an EMS handles is monitoring the available power from the grid and calculating how much should distributed to each charging station – and, in turn, each connected vehicle. Adjusting the power usage in real-time allows CPOs to offer unilateral charging to multiple EVs without overloading the energy grid.
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- Charge scheduling
As well as minimising grid use by distributing energy consumption across multiple chargers, an EMS can also mitigate overuse – and costs – by shifting charging sessions to times in the day when energy rates are lower. This is particularly useful for home charging systems, as they allow EV owners to schedule charging to happen overnight when costs are typically at their lowest.
- Renewable prioritisation
An energy management system can opt to prioritise the source of the electricity being transferred. If programmed to do so, it can lean more on energy coming from solar or wind farms, for example.
- Billing and payment protocols
A charging station’s EMS can also act as the gateway to payments. Its role here is to calculate the energy costs used per charging session – taking live energy rates into account – and convert that data into billing information, ready for the driver to make their payment.
- Analytics and reporting
Since an EMS acts as the brains behind EV charging, it’s also where all the data that CPOs use to adjust and improve their offering is collected and stored. The energy management system will pass all this operational data on to a user-friendly, front-end software dashboard, where CPOs can analyse performance, cost and usage.
What’s key is that drivers and CPOs should never really have to worry about an EMS in a day-to-day sense. It’s a bit like your phone network: if it’s doing its job, you don’t have to think about it.
Why is an EMS important in eMobility?
As EVs proliferate, so will eMobility’s demand on energy grids across the planet. So, while the electric transition is great in terms of its promise of removing greenhouse gas emissions from our roads, it’s really important that the industry makes strides to mitigate that impending grid strain.
Energy management systems are crucial here. By controlling and intelligently distributing electricity among vehicles, an EMS and its associated technology helps drivers stay on the road without putting our other energy needs in jeopardy.
The alternative would be unmonitored systems that unilaterally pump electricity to any vehicle that wants it without limit – which would lead to energy shortages.
Benefits of Using an EMS
Using a software solution with an inbuilt energy management system is vital if CPOs want to be able to keep a handle on costs and energy use. Big benefits here include…
Reduced energy costs
An EMS can be rule-based, which follows pre-set guidance on energy caps, or forecast-based, which predicts energy rates and scales things accordingly. In either case, the system is there to help limit energy consumption – and therefore cost – while identifying and alerting CPOs to times and locations with high consumption.
Sustainability
Carefully monitoring and reducing energy use – and even stipulating that you’d like to prioritise greener energy providers – has inherent sustainability benefits. As a driving force in the electric transition, it’s incumbent on CPOs to do whatever possible to improve EV sustainability. EMS technology is pivotal in that mission.
Operational efficiency
If you can optimise your energy use, you’ll optimise your bottom line. Energy management systems allow for powerful consumption control, but they also fuel an information economy that can help make every aspect of an EV charging business run smoother.
It’s all about that data
An EMS is what transforms a one-way power draw into a smart interaction, so one of the most crucial things it can offer CPOs is data. That data is collected every time a charge begins, and includes information on cost, overall usage, time of day, rate of charge, and energy consumption.
With this information, integrated charge point management software can use data visualisation to help identify trends and insights that can influence future decision-making. For example, if usage trends show that people are charging more at a specific time of day, a CPO might adjust their rates to incentivise usage at other periods. This would help spread energy consumption over the course of the day – and minimise grid strain at the same time.
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Alternatively, a CPO might find that they need to upgrade their chargers to meet that growing demand. Either way, these data-driven insights are only made possible by the EMS’ monitoring capabilities.
How Spirii Integrates with EMS
Spirii is a fully-featured, end-to-end solutions provider for the eMobility space, and everything we do is bespoke for our partners and clients. That means our solutions can work alongside existing energy management systems, or we can offer our own – with certified hardware and software that works closely together.
Read Spirii CEO Tore Harritshøj’s vision for the future of eMobility
Spirii Connect is what brings it all together – offering CPOs and EV fleet managers a one-stop shop for restricting energy use, setting prices that ensure profitability, and building a responsible relationship to the energy grid via smart features like dynamic load management.
Spiri Connect is a one-stop-shop, with analytics and insights that bridge the gap between the software magic your EMS is doing behind the scenes and the real-world results for your business. That means trends and reporting that can help you set smarter energy consumption limits as well as find new ways to incentivise optimal charging across at any time of day.
To learn more about what Spirii can do for you, click here.