In last week’s post, we provided a brief overview of EV charging infrastructure. As the number of EVs continues to grow worldwide, the charging infrastructure must expand accordingly. With this expansion comes the challenge of maintaining an extensive network of charging stations. In this post, we’ll explore how Aikaan can address some of the challenges associated with maintaining a large EV charging infrastructure.

Centralised Network Monitoring

An EV charging stations contain many components, viz., charging cables, powersupply, charging controller, firmware, network connectivity, user interface, among others. When managing thousands of EV charging stations across a large geographical area, constant network monitoring is crucial. Key performance indicators (KPIs) such as charging station connectivity, uptime, CPU usage, and temperature are essential for engineers to maintain infrastructure and perform critical maintenance.

Aikaan provides tools that offer both a bird’s eye view of the network and detailed access to individual charging stations. All of this can be managed remotely from a centralized location using just a browser through the Aikaan Controller.

For instance, Aikaan’s Network Monitoring feature allows engineers to monitor connectivity issues across the entire charging network. Upon logging into the Aikaan Controller, a list of devices and their connectivity statuses are displayed. The “Status” field provides a quick overview of the connectivity status for each device connected to the platform. If a device loses connectivity, the status immediately changes to a red ‘X’ mark.

In the same way other KPIs mentioned above can also be monitored remotely through the Aikaan Controller.

System Upgrades/Downgrades

Another crucial aspect of maintaining a robust charging infrastructure is ensuring timely software and firmware updates and deploying critical security patches. When charging stations are dispersed over a vast geographical area, visiting each site for updates can be costly,time-consuming, and sometimes impossible. 

Aikaan offers all the necessary tools for engineers to easily push software updates and security patches across multiple devices via OTA (Over The Air). Once you login to Aikaan controller, the ‘Device Profile’ parameter allows engineers to group devices based on various criteria such as OS version, hardware version, and security patch version. This enables targeted updates, as different binaries can be generated for each device profile.

The next step is to deploy these artifacts to thousands of devices across the network. Aikaan manages these deployments internally, ensuring they are carried out with multiple retries and automatic re-initiation of any failed deployments. Aikaan also provides live logging of each deployment for easy monitoring and debugging.

Additionally, with Remote SSH sessions, engineers can check the status of deployments from a shell terminal. These sessions can also be used to verify current patch levels, OS versions, and more.

 Below is a screenshot of a shell terminal opened from within the Aikaan Controller:

Below is the OTA Upgrade section of the Aikaan Controller, which gives a list of artifacts ready to be deployed.

With the help of the flexible OTA Upgrade feature on Aikaan, the engineer can make sure the security and integrity of the whole Charging infra is maintained at all times.

Remote Access to Peripheral Devices

Another frequently used feature in charging infrastructure networks is obtaining information about the EVs using the charging stations. While there are multiple ways to gather this information, Aikaan provides an efficient method to access it.

After logging into the Aikaan Controller, select the Device to which the external peripheral device is connected. Then, click on Connect→Open Terminal in Browser to log into the device and access the peripheral device.

This entire process can be automated to run at specific times or in response to particular events, streamlining the workflow and ensuring timely data retrieval.

Network Reports and Events

As previously mentioned, EV charging stations are typically spread across a vast geographical area and are often exposed to harsh elements such as sun, rain, and cold weather. Preventive maintenance is crucial for engineers to prevent critical failures over time.

For example, continuous exposure to the sun may degrade a station’s performance, and installing a sunshade could significantly improve its efficiency. Such insights can be derived from various reports generated by the Aikaan platform.

As illustrated in the screenshot below, the Aikaan Controller’s main page includes a Reports and Events section. With just a few clicks, engineers can generate reports to monitor crucial metrics such as CPU usage, device temperature, and uptime.

Similarly, the Events tab allows engineers to configure triggers for specific conditions. These events can be forwarded to any email, Slack, or WhatsApp account.

These features enable engineers to constantly monitor their infrastructure and take necessary actions when needed.

 As electric vehicle (EV) adoption accelerates worldwide, the need for robust and efficient charging infrastructure becomes increasingly critical. Aikaan addresses several challenges associated with maintaining large-scale EV charging networks through centralized network monitoring, real-time insights, and proactive maintenance capabilities. By leveraging Aikaan’s advanced features and intuitive interface, organizations can ensure optimal performance, scalability, and reliability of their EV charging infrastructure to meet the growing demands of electric mobility.

To know more about Aikaan and its various features visit www.aikaan.io 

You can also open a free account and explore the platform by signing up at https://experience.aikaan.io/signup