Built with first principles
The question in front of us - How do we deliver enough charge to all vehicles without exceeding panel limits or incurring extra cost?
My role for this project was that of a product partner & designer.
Key Contributions:
Challenging product assumptions
Identifying key customer pain points
Planning for scalability
Client Interviews
Collaborators
Engineering Team
VP of Engineering
Product Manager
Fleet operators and property groups, aka site hosts operating at scale expressed two major concerns consistently.
“How do we cut peak demands”
Fleet operators operating at scale presented load management as an essential ingredient to optimizing their fleet operations
“We have limited area and infrastructure to install stations”
Potential site hosts with limited budgets were often worried that they offering ev charging was not possible for them.
Basic truths that created the foundation for design
A circuit can only carry a certain number of amps before it trips.
Electrical infrastructure upgrades are expensive and time-consuming.
Demand charges are billed based on highest short-term kW draw.
Vehicles don’t all need to charge at full power at the same exact moment to be ready for use.
It took a while to nail down the details…
Reducing scope & realigning objectives
The initial PRD included detailed visualization into usage across all electrical phases, panels and breakers. Technical assessments with engineers and project managers revealed a longer timeline.
After speaking with a few clients, the scope for the initiative was reduced to the most important visual: power consumption across all panels.
Trade-offs
Stakeholders expressed preference for long-term data visualization over detailed real-time information.
Fail safes
To avoid overloads and ensure safe operations, only the most critical warnings and notifications were brought on the interface.
The solution that made it in front of users
Attach stations to panels and breakers, just like it's done in the real world
Users can create assets like panels and breakers via the interface.
View real-time power consumption across the entire location
The graph serves as a visual aid into how the algorithm automatically distributes energy uniformly using the OCPP protocol over the cloud.
Historical data on fingertips - easily identify usage patterns to optimize operations and avoid demand costs
Data can aggregated across given time duration options or across a custom one.
Utilities charge site hosts based on peak usage, and not just total usage. Understanding own's usage allows site hosts to experiment with varying charging times.
Overall, this means less error-prone and highly efficient fleet operations, and most importantly, significant savings on demand costs.
Updated future state
Show real-time usage across breakers and electrical phases for more granular visibility and control.
Introduce reporting capabilities to offer more data
Add more alerting systems for greater control