Vehicle Charging Prioritization is designed to cater to the needs of vehicles that needs urgent full power from the charger.
This feature allows for the automatic prioritization of charging sessions at locations where charging power can be limited due to multiple vehicles charging at once. Specifically, it ensures that for example emergency vehicles like ambulances and police cars, receive the charging power they need to operate effectively.
With the Vehicle Charging Prioritization feature, we are committed to enhancing the efficiency and reliability of charging for critical vehicles.
How prioritization works
What locations and chargers can support prioritization?
Any charging location can have prioritization enabled. However, prioritization is only effective when the location utilizes Dynamic Load Management (DLM). This setting allows the system to allocate power more efficiently between the chargers, when multiple cars are charging at the same time. Read more about this here: Power management with Dynamic Load Balancing.
Chargers that do not utilise DLM will not utilize the prioritization feature if enabled, so it’s essential to consider the charger’s configuration. If in doubt of the specific charger model or location offers DLM, reach out to your Spirii Account Manager.
How can I enable prioritization at a specific location?
To enable prioritization, simply navigate to the Location page and click the Edit icon on the location you want to edit. Here, you can mark the location as allowing prioritization. If this setting is disabled, charging sessions at that location will not be prioritized, irrespective of the vehicles involved.
What charge keys can have prioritization enabled?
You can mark any charge key as prioritized through the Charge Key page in Connect. Find the charge key and hit the Edit icon, and mark the Priority feature. This ensures that any charging session authorized with the prioritized charge key receives the necessary charging priority. This also works on virtual charge keys.
How does it work?
The prioritization feature comes into play when the chargers at a location are charging at the same time. In these cases, a prioritized charging session will be allocated more power through DLM, while other sessions share the remaining capacity. Additionally, prioritized sessions will ignore any scheduling restrictions, allowing for immediate charging.
When multiple prioritized sessions are occurring simultaneously, the available capacity is evenly distributed among them, ensuring an efficient charging process.
Viewing and managing Priority charge keys
How can I view the prioritization settings for Charge Keys and Locations?
You can easily filter charge keys and locations by their prioritization settings while searching in Connect. We are also working on implementing a feature that allows you to filter Charge Detail Records (CDRs) by prioritization, which will be available soon.
If an end user calls, how can I check if their charging session was affected by Prioritization?
Currently, the ability to view whether a specific charging session was prioritized is in development. We aim to roll out this feature in the near future.
You can see if Priority charging is working as intented by checking the live charging session. It should show that charging is done with full available power.
Important Considerations: Charging Limitations
While the prioritization feature allocates power more effectively, users should be aware that the charging cable and the vehicle itself also have inherent limitations on charging speed. Factors such as the maximum kW supported by the charging cable and the vehicle's onboard charger can affect the overall charging rate. Therefore, the actual charging speed may vary even when a vehicle is prioritized.
For more details or inquiries, please reach out to your Spirii Account Manager. You can also reach out to our support team at support@spirii.com.