Solar panels on the roof, EV chargers in the car park, perhaps a battery in the plant room. More and more commercial buildings have them all. But these systems often work separately. Then you miss opportunities.
The problem of peaks
Imagine: at nine in the morning, ten colleagues arrive and plug their cars into the chargers. At the same time the HVAC system starts up. Consumption shoots up. While the sun only really shines later in the day.
Peaks like this are expensive. And in many places in the Netherlands the electricity grid is already so full that a heavier connection takes a long time, or is not possible at all.
Smart control
With smart control you match consumption, generation and storage:
- EV chargers charge more slowly when consumption is high, and faster when the sun shines.
- The battery stores power when there is a surplus, and supplies it when there is a shortage.
- Installations that are not urgent move to a better moment.
This way you use more of your own power, and you stay within the limits of your grid connection.
What you need
Smart control needs systems that can talk to each other. That means a stable network connection to the inverters, the battery and the chargers, and a system that controls everything centrally. And of course secure separation between these systems and the rest of the network.
Start with insight
Do you not yet know what your consumption looks like over the day? Then start by measuring. Read how in our article on submetering.
