Introduction
If you want to use Active Load Balancing but no smart meter is available, an external energy meter can be added.
In this article you will learn how to configure a Modbus TCP/IP meter for communication between the external energy meter and the charging station using the ACE Service Installer.
Making connection to an external energy meter
Before starting the configuration, the charger and Modbus TCP/IP meter need to be connected to the same local network.
We strongly advise to set the meters IP-address to a fixed address.
When the settings in the external energy meter are configured correctly, the charging station should be able to find the IP-address of the external energy meter. Therefore it is mandatory to connect both the external energy meter and the charging station to the same network via a router or a switch.
Alfen supports different models external energy meters (Modbus TCP/IP) in the setup.
For the most used brands/models a preset is available directly. Not registered power meters can be setup by using the Manual register mapping.
For the configuration of the Active Load Balancing (ALB) setup with an external energy meter it is needed that the laptop, charger and Modbus TCP/IP meter can connect at the same time, it is therefor needed to use the customer’s network via the router or switch on location.
Please note that only 1 charger in a Smart charging network may have connection to the external power meter!
This charger needs to have the Active Load balancing license unlocked.
Step by step instructions:
- Open the ACE Service Installer and login to the charger.
- Click the Load Balancing tab
- Tick the ‘Active load balancing’ box if not active already.
- Select ‘Meter’ in the Data Source field
- In Protocol selection, select ‘Modbus TCP/IP’
- In the load balancing menu, now click ‘TCP/IP meter’ in the menu on the left.
- For Socomec E27 meter, the preset is directly available here.
- For other presets or manual register mapping, select ‘Customer Register Mapping’.
IP address:
This is the IP address of the external meter (make sure Modbus meter and chargepoint(s) are within the same IP range
We strongly advise to program the TCP/IP meter with a fixed IP-address
Slave address:
The correct value could be found on the modbus meter, default is '5'.
Check settings or user manual from the external energy meter
Word order:
This describes the order of reading the data field.
The order could be Low to high or High to low
(Simplified: Seen digital information consist of 1 and zero’s it is important to describe if you read from left to right or from right to left)
- For some commonly used TCP/IP meters, we have created a preset.
These can be found by clicking the ‘Custom register mapping’ button on the bottom-right of the screen.
- Click the TCP/IP meter in use and save.
- In case the TCP/IP meter used is not on the list, select ‘Manually enter mapping’
- From the meters documentation, please locate the matching registers encryption and factor
Enter these in the corresponding fields and save.
- You can check if meter values come in and are correct, by pressing the ‘Test smart meter’ button on the bottom of the screen.
It should look similar to this.