The ultimate guide for understanding and optimizing load balancing and energy management for your EV charging and more.
Table of Contents
z Rethinking the Limits of Electric Infrastructure
z Understanding EV Load Balancing
z Technical Approaches to Load Balancing
z Key Components of an EV Load Balancing System
z When Monitoring Non-EV Loads Becomes Essential: A Real-Life Use Case
z Reducing Installation Costs through String Architecture
z Delayed Charging: Cost Reduction and Efficiency
z Cloud vs. On-Premise Power Management
z Handling America’s Electric Power Confi gurations
z Powering a Statewide Fleet Electrifi cation Mission with Smarter Charging: A Real-Life Use Case
z The Wevo Advantage: Summing Up the Benefi ts of Advanced Load Balancing
z Conclusion
Rethinking the Limits of Electric Infrastructure
As EV adoption accelerates, pressure on our electrical systems is growing. A traditional response is to invest in expensive capacity upgrades. But advanced EV power management offers an alternative—one that is smarter, faster to deploy, and significantly more cost-effective.
Rather than fighting over power during peak times or investing millions in new transformers and cables, modern load balancing systems dynamically distribute charging loads, delay consumption during expensive peak periods, and adapt to real-time conditions. With the right technology, buildings, parking garages, and other highenergy-density locations can charge more vehicles afford ably without triggering demand charges or overloading panels.
This white paper explores how Wevo Energy’s load-balancing technology turns this vision into reality, enabling scalable, efficient, and future-ready EV charging infrastructures without disruptive, time-consuming and expensive infrastructure upgrades.
Rather than fighting over power during peak times or investing millions in new transformers and cables, modern load balancing systems dynamically distribute charging loads, delay consumption during expensive peak periods, and adapt to real-time conditions.
Understanding EV Load Balancing
EV load balancing intelligently distributes available electrical capacity among multiple EV charging stations to optimize energy usage, reduce peak demand, and prevent overload conditions. Load balancing ensures the electrical infrastructure supports the simultaneous charging of multiple vehicles without exceeding system limits or requiring expensive infrastructure upgrades.
Technical Approaches to Load Balancing
Static Load Balancing
Static load balancing allocates a fixed, predefined maximum power limit to each building or group of chargers. Although simple, this method lacks flexibility, making it less efficient and unsuitable for dynamically changing conditions common in multi-user environments like apartment buildings and workplaces.
Dynamic Load Balancing
EV load balancing intelligently distributes available electrical capacity among multiple EV charging stations to optimize energy usage, reduce peak demand, and prevent overload conditions.
Dynamic load balancing continuously monitors the electrical demand of non-EV loads using a current meter, dynamically adjusting charger outputs to optimize energy distribution based on current conditions. This system responds in real-time to vehicle charging needs and building power constraints, providing optimal utilization of available capacity.
Predictive Load Balancing
Predictive Load Balancing is an advanced variant of dynamic load balancing that incorporates machine learning and predictive analytics. It forecasts usage patterns and proactively adjusts load distribution to maximize charger availability and efficiency. Predictive systems significantly improve charger accessibility and lower operational costs (demand charges and peak energy costs). They also optimize vehicle readiness so each vehicle is charged when expected to be used.
Key Components of an EV Load Balancing System
Smart chargers compliant with OCPP 1.6j and above actively manage and adjust power distribution based on real-time data. These chargers communicate directly with cloud management systems, eliminating the need for separate controllers.
Communication Protocols
Standardized protocols such as OCPP (Open Charge Point Protocol) facilitate seamless communication between EV chargers and cloud-based load balancing systems, ensuring interoperability and scalability.
Cloud-Based Management Software
Cloud management platforms enable remote monitoring, management, and analysis of charging infrastructure, enhancing operational transparency and predictive maintenance capabilities.
Load Monitoring (Optional)
Advanced monitoring sensors via CT clamps or smart meters provide accurate electrical load measurements at distribution points. These sensors are optional and typically used only if non-EV load monitoring is necessary to optimize energy allocation further.
When Monitoring Non-EV Loads Becomes Essential: A Real-Life Use Case
As building depots, and other electrical loads evolve—especially, for example, with the increasing electrifi cation of heating and cooling systems—it’s no longer enough to manage the EV panel in isolation. In many scenarios, visibility into the total site load, including non-EV consumption, is not just helpful—it’s essential.
The culprit wasn’t the EV chargers alone, but their interaction with a growing, unmonitored background load.
Consider a real-world case from one of Wevo’s charger operator partners: A private school had installed 16 EV chargers on a dedicated 200A subpanel, part of a 600A main service. Its EV load management system kept charging within bounds for years. But recently, after adding heat pumps and mini-split HVAC units across the campus, the total site load spiked—causing repeated trips of the main service breaker and leading to full-campus outages.
The culprit wasn’t the EV chargers alone, but their interaction with a growing, unmonitored background load. By adding in Wevo’s EV charging management system with its advanced loadbalancing technology, the school could now introduce site-wide current monitoring and integrate it into the load-balancing logic. Now, the charging system dynamically shifts EV demand to periods of low building usage—ensuring continued access to EV charging while avoiding dangerous overloads and blackouts.
This is where Power Management shines. The ability to “go after all the spare capacity in the red triangle”—to intelligently allocate unused power from a building’s envelope without violating the main service limit—separates next-generation systems, like Wevo Energy, from the pack.
This is where Power Management shines. The ability to ‘go after all the spare capacity in the red triangle’—to intelligently allocate unused power from a building’s envelope without violating the main service limit—separates nextgeneration systems, like Wevo Energy, from the pack.
Reducing Installation Costs through String Architecture
Another way that load balancing can significantly reduce installation costs is by employing a string architecture approach. In this method, multiple EV chargers are connected sequentially to a single circuit breaker in a “string,” considerably reducing cable length, cost, and infrastructure complexity compared to traditional individual wiring setups.
This string architecture can easily be extended to support multiple charger strings and even multi-level electrical panels. Such scalability allows facility managers and property owners to flexibly expand their EV charging infrastructure across different building, lot, and depot configurations, accommodating increased demand while maintaining low installation and management costs.
Delayed Charging: Cost Reduction and Efficiency
By employing advanced load balancing and energy management strategies, properties can substantially reduce operational costs, optimize existing infrastructure, and efficiently accommodate more chargers.
Load balancing can also optimize costs through delayed charging, especially when Time of Use (TOU) electricity rates are involved. Consider two buildings with identical utility rates featuring a Time-of-Use (TOU) peak pricing between 5 PM and 10 PM. Building A implements Wevo’s energy management, effectively delaying and managing EV charging loads, avoiding expensive TOU peak charges, and enabling higher charger density. Conversely, Building B, without energy management, experiences unmanaged peak demands, higher energy costs, and limited charger capacity due to charging during expensive TOU periods.
By employing advanced load balancing and energy management strategies, properties can substantially reduce operational costs, optimize existing infrastructure, and efficiently accommodate more chargers.
Cloud vs. On-Premise Power Management
EV energy management systems can be deployed in three primary architectures: Cloud, On-Premise, and Hybrid. Each has its trade-offs in terms of cost, resilience, deployment complexity, and operational reliability.
Cloud-based systems rely entirely on remote servers to manage and monitor load and EV chargers in real time. For full functionality, these systems require a continuous Internet connection. The main benefits of this architecture are lower cost (no local controller hardware), fast and straightforward deployment, and ease of updating, scaling, and
On-premise systems handle all control logic locally, typically via an on-site dedicated controller. They are not dependent on cloud services to function. Such systems provide lower latency and resiliency to Internet outages, but their installation and maintenance are costly and cumbersome.
Hybrid systems combine the best of both architectures: core intelligence and optimization occur in the cloud, while local fall-back logic ensures continued operation during communication outages.
Wevo Energy’s hybrid control architecture smartly balances cloud-based intelligence with built-in local resilience. Rather than relying on expensive dedicated controllers, Wevo leverages the native capabilities of modern smart chargers via the Open Charge Point Protocol (OCPP).
Using a combination of OCPP Default Profile, Transaction Profie, and Max Profile, Wevo configures schedule-based control policies directly on each charger. These profiles are periodically updated and pushed to all site devices every few minutes.
In a network outage, the chargers continue operating autonomously for up to 24 hours, maintaining safe load management without the risk of overloading circuits or tripping breakers. This ensures peace of mind for site operators and continuity for EV drivers—no controller, manual intervention, or blackout. This hybrid strategy enables Wevo to provide a scalable, low-cost, cloud-first system that still works when the cloud doesn’t—a powerful differentiator in the evolving world of EV infrastructure.
Handling America’s Electric Power Configurations
In North America, many commercial or industrial buildings utilize three-phase “Wye” electrical panels. A 277/480V Wye panel is a three-phase electrical distribution panel providing power at 480 volts between phases and 277 volts from each phase to neutral. It typically serves large loads like HVAC systems and Level 3 DC EV chargers, which require high voltage (480V) for rapid charging.
A step-down transformer can support a 120/208V panel offering 208 volts between phases and 120 volts phase-to-neutral. This panel is widely used for smaller commercial loads and Level 2 EV chargers, which operate efficiently at lower voltages (208V).
Designing and operating EV charging infrastructure across these configurations requires more than voltage matching—it requires a deep understanding of how loads are distributed across phases and how they interact.
For example, as shown below, when connecting a 40A charger between HOT1 and HOT3 on a 120/208V panel, both phases carry 40A. But if a second 40A charger is added between HOT1 and HOT2, the current on HOT1 isn’t simply 80A—the phase difference means vector math must be applied, not simple arithmetic.
These complexities grow further when combining:
z Line-to-line (208V) Level 2 chargers
z Line-to-neutral (120V) Level 1 chargers
z Three-phase Level 3 chargers 13
Without accounting for these vector relationships, panels can become unbalanced, capacity can be miscalculated, and breakers may trip even when individual device loads appear reasonable. Wevo’s load balancing system excels in such complex configurations by dynamically optimizing power distribution across primary (277/480V) and secondary (120/208V) panels, accurately accounting for vectorial differences and phase shifts introduced by step-down transformers. It intelligently manages high-voltage Level 3 DC chargers alongside lower-voltage Level 2 chargers, continuously monitoring real-time load conditions on each panel and calculating current flows through precise vector analysis. This ensures that the system proactively prevents overloads and fully utilizes available electrical capacity, resulting in safer, more reliable, and more efficient charging operations for diverse EV infrastructure setups within North American commercial and industrial environments .
Wevo’s load balancing system excels in such complex configurations by dynamically optimizing power distribution across primary (277/480V) and secondary (120/208V) panels, accurately accounting for vectorial differences and phase shifts introduced by step-down transformers. It intelligently manages high-voltage Level 3 DC chargers alongside lower-voltage Level 2 chargers, continuously monitoring real-time load conditions on each panel and calculating current fl ows through precise vector analysis. This ensures that the system proactively prevents overloads and fully utilizes available electrical capacity, resulting in safer, more reliable, and more efficient charging operations for diverse EV infrastructure setups within North American commercial and industrial environments.
Powering a Statewide Fleet Electrification Mission with Smarter Charging: A Real-Life Use Case
As fleet electrification efforts scale, particularly across large, diverse deployments, simply installing chargers is no longer sufficient. In such scenarios, intelligent power management, including phase-level load balancing and delayed charging, becomes crucial for optimizing infrastructure utilization and reducing costs.
By way of example, let’s look at a real-world case from a leading utility in California, undertaking a statewide fleet electrification mission. They utilize a mix of Level 2 (L2) single-phase chargers on 208V sub-panels, and Level 3 (L3) three-phase chargers on 480V panels for larger trucks and faster charging. Initially, managing these varied charging loads proved complex, and infrastructure upgrades seemed inevitable. However, by implementing Wevo Energy’s advanced load balancing technology, the customer was able to simultaneously manage and optimize charging across all charger types.
The key was phase-level load balancing, which significantly increased infrastructure utilization, allowing up to three times the number of chargers to be installed without costly upgrades.
The key was phase-level load balancing, which significantly increased infrastructure utilization, allowing up to three times the number of chargers to be installed without costly upgrades. Additionally, the customer implemented delayed charging to take advantage of lower Time of Use (TOU) electricity rates. Wevo’s system enabled this even for DC chargers, overcoming their usual limitations by maintaining a minimum current during peak hours.
The result was a highly efficient, cost-effective fleet electrification strategy. The ability to triple charger capacity within the existing setup speaks volumes about the power of intelligent load management. This demonstrates how advanced power management can transform largescale EV deployments, ensuring both efficiency and scalability.
The Wevo Advantage: Summing Up the Benefits of Advanced Load Balancing
In addition to Wevo Energy’s hybrid control architecture, and managing of complex scenarios such as the US electrical configurations, described above, customers enjoy the following main benefits of Wevo’s advanced load balancing and power management:
Reduced Infrastructure Costs
Effective load balancing enables optimal use of existing electrical infrastructure, reducing the need for costly electrical capacity upgrades.
Maximized Charger Availability
Maximized Charger
Availability: Predictive and dynamic load balancing optimizes energy utilization, allowing properties to install significantly more chargers—up to ten times greater charger capacity— compared to unmanaged scenarios.
Predictive and dynamic load balancing optimizes energy utilization, allowing properties to install significantly more chargers—up to ten times greater charger capacity—compared to unmanaged scenarios. This enhanced efficiency significantly increases EV charging availability within the same infrastructure.
Reduced Electricity Costs
Load balancing significantly lowers electricity costs by intelligently optimizing charging schedules to match Time of Use (TOU) rates and smoothing loads to minimize demand charges imposed by utility providers.
Enhanced Grid Stability
Load balancing reduces peak demand and prevents overloading, contributing to grid stability and reliability.
Conclusion
As electric vehicle adoption accelerates, choosing the right energy management solution is essential to maintain an efficient, affordable, and scalable charging infrastructure. Additionally, selecting the right partner who can support future requirements is essential for keeping ongoing costs down. Wevo Energy offers the industry’s most advanced technology, combining dynamic and predictive load balancing, simplified installation through its innovative string architecture, and intelligent cloud-based management. Wevo’s cutting-edge system significantly reduces installation and operational costs, maximizes charger capacity, and ensures stable grid operations even in complex North American electrical setups. Selecting Wevo positions property managers, fleet managers, and other environmentally-conscious businesses ahead of the curve, enabling them to meet growing EV charging demands while confidently future-proofing their investments.
About Wevo Energy
Wevo Energy, a SolarEdge company, is committed to driving the future of electric mobility through cutting-edge software solutions—helping EV charging operators manage, optimize, and scale their networks worldwide. To learn more, visit www.WevoEnergy.com.
