EV Charging Management - Admin and CMS

The booming growth of Electric vehicles across the globe, especially across the metropolitan cities whose investments are growing towards the solid promotions of Electric vehicles are paving way for increased adoption of EV registration and variability in the models. Some of the key promotion actions such as toll reductions for EV users, free parking space, purchasing incentives, and investment in building new EV charging stations are propelling the adoption of Electric vehicles and thereby increasing the demand for the EV charging management solution. This case study talks about the key features of EV charging management solutions in detail.

Objective

To design an app based platform that let users search and navigate to charging stations on the go along with offering ease and convenience.

Process

Developed our product through the following five phases: Research, Synthesize, Ideate, UI Design & Test.

Research

Competitor Analyses User goals User pain points

Synthesize

High level design goals Key features & motivations

Ideate

• Card sorting

• Site map

• Task flow

UI Design

• Logo design

• Low-fi sketches

• Style

Test

• Usability testing

• Iteration & implementation

• Hi-fi prototypes

• Final screens

Log-in screen

Making the login process easier makes the platform more appealing for the user is the goal. Keeping it simple and vivid steps make the user navigate easier into the platform. This requires you to enter the email address for future contact and a password for authentication. New users can begin with creating an account with simple steps.

Dashboard

A clear full status can be viewed here by the EV charging operators, which helps them to access full information related to EV charging operations, EV charging billing, Energy management, EV driver management, EV fleet management, and significant others. Therefore this feature enables the EV charging operator to manage several aspects of EV charging service in one place.

Status of vendors

To display the information crisply and on point is the goal. the platform showcases the number of vendors just above the circular progress bar. This circular progress bar shows the number of active vendors and inactive ones associated with the operator. The usage of a circular progress bar here eliminates the requirement of a separate passage about the status. This enables the operator to render information in no time while letting them visualize the progress.

The number of charging stations

This segment lets the operator establish efficient control over the charging station. This feature shows the number of charging stations under the operator's control and also shows the status of charging stations in percentage, in circular progress bars.

The number of users

A regular update on the number of users of the electric vehicle charges is made, which enables the operator to view and scale their business progress right on the dashboard itself.

Downloads

This feature showcases the operator to know about their reach across the potential vendors. The number of downloads made is also shown in a visual representation that aids the operators to set goals related to the promotion actions to increase the number of downloads.

Monthly revenue

The key feature of the EV charging CMS is efficient billing management and invoice management. The maintenance of monthly revenue without any glitch helps the business grow tremendously, therefore this section lets the operator track their monthly revenue which is divided into transactions made in the month, amount of power used for charging, and time consumption.

Analyzing these details accompanied with other factors such as charging speed, pricing plans and so on every month helps the operator to keep track of their business statistics.   Analyzing the details related to the other parties associated with the company, business partners and EV roaming providers gives the operator a bird’s view of their company’s progress.

Recent charging stations

This section gives complete details of the charging stations that are under the control of the operator. The sector is divided into three columns, which are:

• Station name

• Location Status

Charging stations management screen

The primary objective of the EV charging management solution is to monitor the charging network and receive alerts in real-time from both the charging infrastructure and the drivers. This monitoring helps the operator address any issue that might pop up in no time.

This page helps to analyze and show the charging behavior of the charging points and maintain a log of the transactions made in real-time from all the charging stations.

The two portions on the page are:

Current status of the charging point

This portion lets the operator view the live status of the selected charging point in the charging station. This feature enables the operator to know about the availability of the chosen charging point. It shows a “highlighted green text” saying “available” at the beginning of the details. Therefore the operator doesn’t have to navigate multiple steps to change the operation of the selected charging point.

Similarly, other details of the charging point such as power capacity, compatibility of the charging point, and cost collected per unit are mentioned in this section.

This section gives the operator the potential to change the availability status of the selected charging point or start or stop the transaction remotely. This option checks the conditions such as EV is connected to the charge point, is the user authorized, and then begins the transaction and pauses during the occurrence of any condition such as a warm or full battery.

Moreover, the remote controlling facility helps the operator to unlock the connector of the selected charging point using the “unlock connector” button at the top right corner of this portion.

Configuration control of the charging points

This is where the operator can either decide to reset the entire operation nature of the charging point. The platform provides the operator to choose between “Soft reset” and “hard reset”. The soft reset option lets the operator terminate any transaction normally before the resetting option and the hard reset option lets the operator terminate any transaction normally to begin the rebooting.

The operator can also change the configuration of the selected charging point and send it across the charging infrastructure for immediate implementation. Additionally, the operator can pass information across their vendors by entering the vendor id or they can send a trigger message to the vendors. This page allows the operator to have the luxury of managing more than one charging point, by clicking on “add charging point” at the top right of the page allows the operator to view more than one charging point concurrently.

Moreover changing the configuration of the charging points is another critical feature that the operator can have access to. By entering the specified key and value set, the operator can change the configuration. Similarly, the operator can also clear the authorization cache memory of the selected charging point by clicking on the button given in popping bright red color at the top right corner.

Charging list screen

This page enables the operator to view the list of approved charging stations along with their location and statuses.

• The separate tabular columns for the approved and archived stations enable the operator to take quick action and this section allows the operator to customize according to their need.

• Moreover, the list of the stations is numbered for easy reference. Other essential details of the charging stations are provided alongside the name of the charging station row-wise. For instance, the operator can have access to the details such as the city where the charging station is located(with zip code), and the number of charging points available in the station which is also color-coded into bright red and green for faster evaluation of the statuses, type of the connectors(number of pin and type), revenue information of the charging station, quick action button that says, “edit &view” that allow to either edit or view the information in detail.

• This page is also provided with an easy navigation option at the bottom for the operator to navigate across the pages. This page helps to analyze and show the charging behavior of the charging points and maintain a log of the transactions made in real-time from all the charging stations.