Solving electric vehicle charging challenges with off-grid innovation

The electric vehicle (EV) industry is growing with automakers and many governments pushing for further adoption to reduce emissions. However, a major challenge threatens to slow greater US adoption: getting enough power from the grid. 

The current state of electrical infrastructure is not designed to handle the surge in demand created by EVs, especially in areas where the industry is expanding rapidly. 

Even in areas like California, where state support has outpaced larger federal initiatives to improve grid capability ahead of the expected 30 million EVs on the road by 2030, the electrical grid is not designed to handle the charging of thousands of vehicles simultaneously.  

“Improving charger and vehicle technology along with grid upgrades will make it possible to accommodate charging in ways that will minimize the grid impact,” stated a recent assessment from California’s Energy Commission. 

While that may be true in the future, in the short term, getting a large charging depot connected to the grid today requires making a request for greater capacity from the local utility. Unfortunately, this also means joining the backlog of roughly 12,000 projects nationwide that are similarly waiting for interconnection. Wait times can last years.  

A number of companies, however, are finding creative solutions to work around the traditional power grid to get charging depots running sooner. 

One approach deploys microgrids, which are localized energy systems that operate independently from the central power grid. These systems combine renewable energy sources, like solar panels, with battery storage and backup generators to create a self-sufficient charging hub. 

However, building microgrids that incorporate distributed energy resources (DER), such as generators and battery banks, comes with its own obstacles, like the risk of overloading the microgrid. 

Another approach in the market looks to adopt dynamic energy management, where smart software optimizes when and how vehicles are charged to reduce strain on the grid.

Companies like Brooklyn-based Synop are leading this approach and applying its advantages to the former. They offer software that balances charging demand with available energy capacity, helping commercial EV fleets avoid peak electricity costs and reduce reliance on utility upgrades. 

The company’s energy management solutions enable fleets to maximize both vehicle uptime and the efficiency of their charging infrastructure.

With advanced software, fleet operators can schedule charging times, monitor energy usage, and even incorporate on-site power generation to reduce dependence on the energy grid.

In fact, one logistics company did all three. In a use case shared with The Sociable, Synop helped the company when their proposed charging depot ran into trouble. The planned charging depot was ambitious, designed for simultaneous use by multiple electric fleets.

To avoid long interconnection timelines, the company had constructed a microgrid consisting of generators and a large battery bank to charge their vehicles. 

They soon found, however, that when the batteries were depleted, the generators were not able to charge both the battery bank and plugged-in vehicles at the same time. This created a potentially hazardous scenario that needed to be addressed in order to keep the systems online and running safely. 

But as the battery bank was not networked, this required manual proctoring by on-site personnel who would be tasked with alerting the system when the overall charge was getting too low. 

To avoid this tedious intervention, Synop installed an edge device which brought the necessary data to the cloud and made it possible to communicate with the battery bank. As a result, when the battery level fell below a set threshold, Synop’s software would automatically intervene and decrease the utilization of the chargers. 

Additionally, their solutions were also being tapped to charge fleet vehicles to an optimized State-of-Charge (SoC), maintain uptime on chargers, and manage the entire site’s energy load, ensuring operations could run smoothly without the risk of system failure. 

As EV adoption continues to grow, the industry must address the challenge of charging infrastructure constraints, which requires utilities to continue the work of upgrading the grid. Meanwhile, startups are pioneering solutions that help fleets charge smarter, and more efficiently. 

By embracing microgrids, battery storage, and advanced energy management, the industry can accelerate the transition to electric mobility without being held back by grid limitations.

Disclosure: This article mentions a client of an Espacio portfolio company.