Charger connectivity

Join us as we sit down with Koen Elands, Product Manager at Peblar, and talk about connectivity. We talk about what types of connections, and which is the most effective for your charger.

Is internet connection vital for an EV charger?

In a lot of applications, I think that internet connection is vital for an EV charger, especially in the business locations where you have a lease car at home so that you can do perform transactions. But there are also a lot of cases where Internet connectivity is not really a high requirement. I feel, for example, in home charging with your privately owned car, you want to have insights in in the EV charger, which don't necessarily need Internet connection.

For that, you can connect it to your local router, not connected to the open internet. And then yeah, you can still have insights in your charger and see how your charger performs, perform small charging on the local level and so still have the functionality needs, but internet connection is definitely vital for a lot of use cases and EV charging.

What's the difference between ethernet, WLAN and 4G/2G? And when to use which option?

Typically, most charge point operators want to be in control of their own connectivity, so they usually choose 4G 2G connection with mobile network, so with a SIM card. But in some locations, for example, parking lots in the grounds or maybe rural areas, the collection is bad and, and then it is as wise to use easiness or wlan prefer to ease in that because it's a hard wired connection and even though your use depends on the rotor of a household or a building, it still results in quite stable internet.

So that's a little bit the choice. The also the installer needs to make whether they go for a mobile network because they have stable internet and in certain areas, for example cities outdoors or whether they need to choose for a wireless connection.

What happens if the internet connection gets unstable?

When you have a connected charger which is connected to your back office, you would need to perform transactions. And there is no internet initially, actually, there's not really a problem because typically and if you are, you can still work offline for a certain amount of time. But if it's probably during like insulation, you cannot connect to the back back office. Initially that might lead to some problems. And also if it's offline for a longer period of time, then that might be no memory anymore to save the transactions and then the will just cannot perform any transactions for.
 
And it is also offline for small charging behavior cannot be controlled from the back office. So yeah, that's which is a vital point for chargepoint operators. So yeah, it has quite some consequences when your charger is offline for a longer period of time.