Public Charging Stations – Behind the Scenes
There are many differences between a current company that operates gas stations, local or nationwide, and a company that operates public charging stations for electric cars. This means different management tools.
Behind the scene of all public charging stations there is software. How else can you control hundreds (if not thousands) of charging points spread all over the county, in shopping centers, office buildings, parking lots and along the roads?
Public charging stations operation is a network. First there is the electrical network connecting every charging station, and then there is the data network that wraps all the activities in the electrical network and processes them into manageable information, 24\7.
Public charging station serve many types of customers differing by segments, prices and rates, consumption habits, benefits and more. The dialog between a charging company and its customers is continuous and of course critical. Just imagine several thousand customers connecting for service at once, each one expecting personal service.
The EV charging station management software that enables centralized controlling and managing of the public charging station network handles usage data, access control, customer identification, electricity usage, pricing, billing and advertising. In global companies like Success Charging the software manages billing in different currencies.
The management tool behind the scene of charging network is a multi-level system – global view, countries, different types of cars, different EVSE (electric vehicle supply equipment), charging plans and accessibilities. The buzz word now is "interoperability", meaning the possibility of charging stations to serve different car models and different sockets. Since there is no international standard socket yet, the newer and more developed station models can accommodate the few popular standards.
