cFos Charging Manager

The cFos Charging Manager is aimed at operators of parking lots that are to be equipped with wallboxes for charging electric cars. The goal is to provide the individual electric cars with as much charging power as possible, taking into account the available total power - without having to increase the existing house connection capacity

Previous solutions are expensive and usually limited to a specific supplier of wallboxes

The cFos Charging Manager allows you to set up your charging infrastructure according to your needs. For this purpose, cFos Charging Manager supports a number of wallboxes from different manufacturers. We are constantly working on expanding the list of supported wallboxes

To plan your charging infrastructure, first select the desired wallboxes. For large systems, the individual wallboxes should be as inexpensive as possible so that the total costs remain manageable. For this reason, the cFos Charging Manager also supports low-cost models and will then make any missing wallbox functionality available in other ways

Scenarios

Single family house with solar system

1-2 wallboxes, Charging Agent, intermedita meter for home consumption measurement, S0 meter for wallbox consumption measurement

1 wallbox with 22kW and instantaneous water heater would overbook the existing house connection capacity. Thanks to charge management, the charging power for the car is shut down when someone takes a shower or cooks. With 2 wallboxes the charging power would be distributed to both cars. Solar power is used to charge the cars during the day

Garage 50 parking spaces

with go-e boxes and central ABB B24 (Modbus to Raspberry PI) in an apartment building

In several places in the garage there are RFID readers that communicate with the cFos Charging Manager

Supported wallboxes

All wallboxes with sufficiently supported OCPP 1.5 and OCPP 1.6 (SOAP and JSON) ^(*)
Tesla Wall Connector Gen 2
go-e HOME+ Mobile and SMARTFOX Car Charger
Keba KeContact P30 c-series and x-series via Keba UDP
Wallboxes which are built with the controller of EVracing, e.g. certain models of Stark-in-Strom
Wallboxes that are built with the SmartEVSE controller from Stegen Electronics
cFos Power Brain

Supported intermediate meters

ABB B23 112-100
ABB B24 112-100
Eastron SDM630
Eastron SDM72D
Pilot SPM9513
SMA STPxx000-tl inverter (as generation meter)
SMA Sunny Boy (as generation meter)
Solar inverters according to SUNSPEC, tested with
- Fronius, Smart Meter TS 65A-3, 1.3 (SunSpec Model 213)
- Fronius, Symo 12.5-3-M,0.3.23.0 (SunSpec Model 113)
- KOSTAL, PLENTICORE plus7.0, 01.09.03412 (SunSpec Model 103)
- KOSTAL, PLENTICORE plus8.5, 01.17.05075 (SunSpec Model 103)
- KOSTAL, PLENTICORE plus10, 01.14.04213 (SunSpec Model 103)
Check yourself if the cFos Charging Manager is compatible with your inverter.
Meters with S0 output

^(*) We tested the cFos Charging Manager for compatibility during the OCPP July 2020 Plugfest. If you want to make sure that your OCPP device works with the cFos Charging Manager, please contact us for a free remote test

The choice of wallbox determines the networking. Mixed and retrofitted wallboxes from other manufacturers are also possible. So you are not dependent on a wallbox manufacturer!

With OCPP and Keba, networking typically consists of Ethernet cabling. go-e and SMARTFOX use WLAN. EVracing (Stark-in-Strom) and SmartEVSE require 2-wire Modbus RTU cabling. The cFos Charging Manager can communicate simultaneously with Ethernet, WLAN and via Modbus RTU

Questions and Answers regarding cFos Power Brain 11kW, cFos Power Brain and cFos Charging Manager

Billing and Authentication

OCPP wallboxes, as well as Keba, go-e and SMARTFOX have built-in electricity meters that the cFos Charging Manager can read and make the kilowatt hours used available for billing. Wallboxes with controllers from EVracing and SmartEVSE require a separate meter. In this case, the ABB B23 112-100 pro wallbox, which is wired via Modbus RTU, is a good choice. We recommend to install a separate Modbus for networking the intermediate meters

OCPP wallboxes typically have an RFID reader for authentication. Also the go-e Home+ Mobile, SMARTFOX Car Charger and most models of the keba c- and x-series have their own RFID reader. In this case you will teach these wallboxes new RFID cards. Then these wallboxes check the RFID card and activate the charging process automatically. The cFos Charging Manager remains informed about the charging process and can regulate the charging power

For wallboxes without their own RFID reader, release can be done via a Web interface of the cFos Charging Manager by entering a PIN. You can also connect an RFID reader to the cFos Charging Manager or network it with one or more RFID readers. The cFos Charging Manager then takes over authorization and release of the wallboxes. Mixed operation of wallboxes with and without RFID readers is also possible

Control of charging power

The cFos Charging Manager tries to distribute the maximum connected load installed in the building as well as possible to the electric cars to be charged
The cFos Charging Manager calculates the available charging power from one second to the next as follows:

To record consumption (and generation), Modbus-capable intermediate meters must be installed:
Either you install an intermediate meter for each consumer and generator or you install a central meter at the house connection. In both cases, the cFos Charging Manager reads the meters via Modbus (we recommend the ABB B23 112-100 with direct measurement for powers up to 40kW and the ABB B24 112-100 with transformer measurement with corresponding transformer coils for higher powers. Both can be read out well via Modbus RTU

Many intermediate meters output so-called S0 pulses (e.g. 1000 pulses per kWh). The cFos Charging Manager can also evaluate these pulses per counter using a USB FTDI adapter

By recording consumption and generation, the cFos Charging Manager always knows how much charging power to distribute to the wallboxes in use. You can assign different priorities to the individual wallboxes. The available charging power is first distributed to the wallboxes of higher priority and the remaining power is then distributed to the wallboxes of lower priority. This way you can, for example, quickly recharge emergency vehicles while long parked users are "refuelled" during the day

The prioritization scheme also supports the temporary deactivation of wallboxes if the minimum charging power is not reached. In addition, the phase symmetry is monitored to prevent individual phases from being loaded beyond the level prescribed by the VDE during single-phase charging

Charging rules

Several charging rules can be configured per user and per wallbox, which determine the charging performance according to certain criteria. This allows you to configure e.g. certain times when the charging power is limited

Furthermore, the charging power can be changed depending on a switching input, for example, if the energy supplier signals certain tariffs by doing so. Another possibility is to control the charging power depending on the available generation capacity of a solar system

Material list

Wall boxes and cabling
1 Raspberry PI 3 or 4 plus power supply unit or Windows PC
One USB <-> RS485 adapter (FTDI, virtual COM port) per Modbus RTU
Intermediate counter
Additional FTDI adapters for S0 counters
additional RFID readers for cFos Charging Manager (may require additional Raspberry PI)

Prerequisite is that the cFos Charging Manager is connected to the Internet and can be reached from "outside".

cFos Charging Manager prices

Non-commercial licences for private use (also owner associations, up to a maximum of 5 charging points):
1 charging point: free
2-5 charging points: 49,- Euro per additional charging point
Commercial license per EVSE / charging plug: Starting at 79,- EURO + VAT

Detailed price list for the cFos Charging Manager and hardware kits

Cerințe de sistem

Windows 10 or Raspberry Pi 3 or 4 with permanent Internet connection

Documentație

Manufacturer's declaration

Download manufacturer's declaration (PDF/German)