Configure your chargers to comply to "The Electric Vehicles (Smart Charge Points) Regulations 2021"
The described feature only applies for public chargers located in the UK and with a maximum charging power of 50 kW that were purchased after the 30th June 2022.
The Electric Vehicles (Smart Charge Points) Regulations 2021 state that "a charge point must be configured so that it incorporates pre-set default charging hours which are outside of peak hours" with peak hours being from 8am to 11am and from 4pm to 10pm on weekdays. This means that charging at a charge point only starts within the set charging hours regardless of what time a vehicle is actually connected. To avoid rapid changes in electricity grid demand, a randomised delay should also be applied to charging sessions at the start and end of scheduled charging sessions.
Smart Charging at vaylens
To comply with these regulations, you can check a charger's Smart Charging settings in Charging infrastructure > Charging station details > Smart charging.
When putting a charger into operation, the system automatically detects whether the Smart Charging Regulations may apply based on the charger's location and configuration. In consequence, Smart Charging will automatically be activated and you will be directed to the Charging station details page to check settings and modify the Smart Charging features should you wish to.
The Smart Charging tab provides you with an overview off the Smart Charging features Off-peak hours and Randomised delay. You can activate or deactivate all supported Smart Charging related features by starting Edit mode.
You cannot activate Smart Charging features if the charger is part of a load management cluster. To make the edit mode available, you need to remove the charger from the load management cluster first.
Deactivating a Smart Charging feature will trigger a notification which needs to be confirmed to effectively turn off the feature.
You would typically want to deactivate a Smart Charging feature in case your charger's hardware already takes care of this.
Off-peak charging
As mentioned earlier, the Smart Charging Regulations encourage charge point owners to start charging sessions outside of peak hours on the electricity grid. To automate the process, peak hours can be defined and managed in the vaylens portal.
By default, the charger will not start charging the EV during the selected time intervals, instead the charging session will be scheduled to start at the beginning of the next off-peak period. However, the owner of the charger or the EV driver will be able to override this restriction (e.g. in case of emergency) and start the charging session immediately even during peak hours. If no time period is selected or this feature is turned off, then no restrictions are applied and charging always starts as soon as possible.
With Off-peak charging activated, you can click on Edit to change existing time intervals and add new ones to the schedule.
Randomised delay
A randomised delay will be applied at the beginning and end of any off-peak charging period. The delay can be up to 10 minutes in duration as required by the regulations. You can activate or deactivate this feature by starting Edit mode.
Please consider that the regulations require that a random delay should always be applied to scheduled charging sessions and the delay in vaylens should only be deactivated should an equivalent delay be implemented on your charging hardware.