You may have heard of automatic load management, but what does it mean? Well, an automatic load management, or ALM, is a charging system that can dynamically adjust the charge rate of your charger at any one time.
Why dynamically adjust the charge rate of your charger?
By looking at what is actually being used in your property or your workplace at any given time and it will be able to dynamically fluctuate the amperage or power that goes to your charger. The benefit of this is it may remove the need to upgrade the main service fuse and more flexible and efficient charging.
How do I install Automatic Load Management?
To install, your charger and your automatic load management system (ALM), will need to be compatible and able to talk to each other. There will be a small box that will need to be installed near to your meter or your consumer unit and a clamp that will go around you live meter tail. This is similar to smart home meters. We could measure the amount of energy we were using and you get a little screen and see how much energy your house is consuming.
Calculating energy passing through your cable
The ALM system will feed information into the software and the gubbins inside and will be calculating how much energy is passing through that cable at any one time.
It will be able to release whatever is left depending on what the settings were inputted after a calculation of maximum demand to protect your main service fuse, that could be 60, 80, or 100-amp single phase.
Obviously you can get a 100-amp, 3-phase, so it’s a 100-amp per phase. So that will look at that, how much is being used in the premises at the moment.
It will ask, “what have we got available?” You’re using 40 amps at the moment, and you’ve got a 100-amp fuse and a 32-amp charger, so hey, let’s use all 32 amps on the charger at the moment.
What If other appliances else gets turned on?
If another appliance else gets turned on, if you’re at home for instance and someone’s gotten into a shower, that 40 amps has now gone up to 70, for example so the charge rate will dynamically reduce.
Is there a safety margin?
Yes. When we set up an ALM we always input a safety margin of maybe 5 amps, so using the example above we’ve only got 25 amps spare, so we’re going to turn the charger down at the moment to 25 amps. It’ll do that dynamically and automatically, you won’t know it’s happening.
Calculating the maximum demand
We’ve recently become a registered and approved installers for EO and all their charges have a system to dial down the maximum charge rate the unit will deliver.
We will calculate whatever the maximum demand for your property is, and then you can actually dial down the charger on installation. We will set it to deliver its maximum available power within the limits of the charger.
How much power can my charger deliver?
Let’s say it’s capable of delivering 32 amps, (or 7.2 kilowatts), but there isn’t that much available in the property. Rather than upgrade the fuse or install a load management system, we’re going to dial that down to 20 amps, for example, because that’s all that’s available. This is something we would do on set up and installation.
Which ALM charger should I buy?
There are many Automatic Load Management products out there and a qualified installer will be able to specify what’s best-suited for your installation.
Be aware every instance is going to be different. Inside of everyone’s house you have different electrical items, and the main service fuse is going to be different in all cases.