Why Local vs Cloud Load Management

Our Cuprous Local Controller (CLC) product performs a number of functions on-site in a building, often installed in an electrical cabinet. One of its important functions is to observe the electricity used by the building and direct anything spare to the Electric Vehicles (EVs) needing to charge. This is known as “load management”, or “load balancing” and its decision making is in near-real-time.

Other vendors in this space perform the same function of load management in the “cloud” i.e. the EV chargers connect directly to a service running in the cloud over the internet.

So, why does our CLC perform load management locally on-site instead of over the internet in the cloud? We will touch on a couple of reasons, but perhaps the most important one to understand is because we believe that charging an EV should not be dependent on the availability of the internet.

Australia's internet, powered by the National Broadband Network (NBN), is globally competitive, yet it still experiences outages. On average, outages lasting over 30 seconds occur approximately once per week between 5 AM to midnight (1). And Network upgrades typically occur between those other hours of midnight to 5 AM, leading to more frequent and impactful outages for EV charging. This is because cheaper electricity is often available during these early-morning hours and we are naturally wanting to save money and charge then.

The supply of electricity fares much better than the supply of the internet in terms of reliability. For comparison, the average customer experienced about one outage in a year in 2023 (2).

Another reason for local load management is the ability to respond to a building’s supply constraints in milliseconds if needed. For example, the CLC can detect a fire alarm activation in a building and shutdown EV charging immediately.

Internet outages are quite common and, while not an issue or even noticed in general use, for cloud-based EV charging and load management they can be a problem. When cloud-based, the load management function is disconnected from the charging stations resulting in a loss of control. The effect of this might be to interrupt all the EV charging at the site or, in a worse case, trip the main breaker and interrupt all power to the site until a qualified person can restore it.

The CLC avoids this problem and maximises the opportunity for safe EV charging by being local. It is available now. Contact us to discuss how it may help your building’s EV charging experience.

(1) “Average daily outages per service lasting longer than 30 seconds”, https://www.accc.gov.au/consumers/telecommunications-and-internet/broadband-performance-data

(2) Page 44, “...normalised for SAIDI and SAIFI…”, https://www.aer.gov.au/system/files/2024-09/2024%20Electricity%20and%20gas%20networks%20performance%20report.pdf