Workplace charging provides employees with access to vehicle charging during the workday and can expand options for those without charging at home. As participation grows, workplace charging is becoming a more significant operational and infrastructure consideration for organizations managing building energy use.
Managing workplace charging requires approaches that support reliable access while preventing charging demand from contributing to peak load or exceeding site capacity. Reservation-based systems and smart charge management tools offer ways to coordinate charging activity, balance demand and respond to onsite conditions such as variable power availability.
At the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory, researchers examined these approaches through the development and deployment of a reservation-based workplace charging platform known as EVrez. The platform allows employees to schedule charging sessions while providing operators with real-time visibility into charger use, enabling more predictable operations and supporting consistent access across a limited number of chargers.
EVrez was integrated with smart charge management software that adjusts charging power to remain within building capacity limits and respond to onsite conditions, including variable solar generation. Operational data from charging activity were used to improve estimates of charging needs and identify flexibility across sessions, helping reduce peak demand and avoid capacity exceedances while continuing to meet employee charging needs.
Together, this work shows how workplace charging can be actively managed rather than treated as an unmanaged electrical load. Argonne’s approach demonstrates how data, automation and user-centered design can support efficient operation and long-term scalability as workplace charging demand continues to grow.
Read the full report, Managing Workplace Charging: Argonne National Laboratory’s Reservation-Based Smart Charging Platform, to learn more about the design, operation and performance of a reservation-based workplace charging system. This work was conducted by Argonne in collaboration with the Smart Electric Power Alliance.