There seems to be a bit of a struggle going on in the EV sector. So-called smart chargers are required if customers want to avail of the OZEV grant which is at a the paltry sum of £350. It looks like many manufacturers have gone the GPRS route using OCPP while others are connecting to the internet via the customers own internet connection. Is this a VHS v Betamax type thing? Which do you think is best?
I think you will see both needed for many years to come, especially in rural areas that have either patchy cellular coverage, or a very stringy phone network and broadband that drops out.
Sadly it is often the same sort of places that suffer from both. The 4G networks in our nearest city (Southampton) is remarkably complete, but also very under used. I suspect the wonderful data rates that folk are getting now will not be sustainable once there are more than a few users per base-station. 5G will probably need a new round of hardware again.
Also there will be plenty of places (underground car parks come to mind) that the RF will not get without a sprinkling of repeater base-station micro-cells and other hacks, that have to be paid for by someone, and undo the advantage of not installing cables.
Ultimately, assuming the incessant demand for more bandwidth continues, the winner will be neither copper cables nor radio for static locations, but optical fibre to the home and for the keenest, fibre right to the desktop.
This makes it difficult for designers of kit now to make anything future-proof for more than a few years, and the little I have seen inside the tendency is to make provision for wired and to have a wireless modem of some kind as well, but usually as a plug in module, so when the standard changes, only the interface module needs changing. (and some companies think they can save money and that the rest of the giblets can be designed by someone who does not understand radio, leading to some amusements.
A problem design I saw not so long ago had an integrated GPS module that 'never works properly' - understand that the module was mounted with the antenna underneath the PCB, so how they thought it would see the satellites in the sky I have no idea... turning it over worked, but the plastics had to change.)
Last time I lokoed I think we were mostly pretty much against them.like a 2/9 average vote (I picked 9 rather than 10 to make a 5 a sat on fence type idea)
I've got a Pod-point smart EV charger that's connected to my WiFi.
I honestly don't know why they call it a Smart Charger, all it seems to use the WiFi connection for is feeding back my usage data to the mothership!
There are no "smart" features that I can use like limiting charging to off-peak times or anything useful like that, so I'm planning to open it up and install a small wifi-enabled microcontroller and relay to allow me to control precisely when it allows charging. then it will be smart
I have wondered about those charge points - all the smart seems to be in the car regarding charging. What is the point of the charger being connected to anything other than 240V unless to use to switch it on and off (as you say timing/load balancing etc)? The publicity around them is very vague up to now other than lots of buzzwords. My TV is "smart" but it doesn't have a wifi account, still shows a picture.
The term "smart" is simply a marketing term and is therefore meaningless. Smart meters are being sold, not to reduce consumption per see, but to control one's consumption by switching off if necessary. They are supposed to report one's meter readings but when they tried one on my house it didn't work at all and they gave up and took it away. A good thing really because I would never have one now! Car charging is a similar thing really, the car design is faulty, they should be class 2 (double insulated) for good safety reasons but are not and require an Earth connection. The charger is nothing but a special cable and a bit of electronics to receive information from the car as to when to turn on or off, and in some cases to control the charge rate. The car decides everything, the charger is the slave, with a special plug, and very expensive. None of it is properly "smart" at all.
