The system, dubbed “SWTCH Cortex,” is already in operation at one Ottawa-area multi-unit residential building 

A new system for managing electric vehicle charging in multi-unit residential buildings is promising to significantly cut project costs and improve efficiency.

SWTCH Energy, a Toronto-based smart EV charging solution provider, today announced the release of their new platform, Cortex.

“There are two main challenges that we think exist for MURB charging,” says Carter Li, CEO of SWTCH.

“One is the electrical infrastructure and the other is the network connectivity of these buildings. We’ve been trying to tackle this issue of MURB charging for the last decade. [Cortex] is the culmination of everything we’ve seen and tried to solve, all put together.”

A “best of both worlds” system

Li describes Cortex as a hybrid system that uses a combination of localized infrastructure and cloud-based services to manage EV charging.

In doing this, SWTCH says it has not only made a more reliable platform, it has been able to cut labour and installation costs dramatically.

All of this translates to increased access to charging for a greater number of MURB residents.

“We can confidently say, after testing it for three years,” says Li, “there’s not a single building in Ontario, in places like MURBs, that cannot provide EV charging. As long as you have a 110V plug there’s enough power for us to coordinate charging.”

Cortex is currently in operation at one of SWTCH’s partner buildings in Ottawa providing a real-life testing ground for the system over the past year. Meanwhile, SWTCH is installing Cortex in a 10-storey parking garage in Texas, in a move that, it says, will save the project tens of thousands of dollars.

“I think the quote was something like $80,000 for labour just to provide connectivity to the levels. [With Cortex], they’re spending about $6,000 on the entire install. So we’re talking about a 10th of the cost of connectivity,” says Li.

The cost savings come from the system’s hybrid local-cloud set up.

Traditionally charging operators in MURBs rely on multiple WiFi access points, generally located where the chargers are. Cortex, however, uses a “home-base” micro computer on location that communicates with one WiFi access point located on each floor of the parking structure (called a SWTCH Echo) and also transmits the data continually to the cloud.

In the event of the internet going down, says Li, the home-base computer stores all of the transaction and charging activity during the outage and is able to upload it to the cloud once connectivity is restored.

Easing range anxiety

One of SWTCH’s key goals is to manage EV charging in a way that avoids the need for costly electrical system upgrades.

“How do we use every electron that’s available in a building to get these cars charged?,” asks Greg Overmonds, head of marketing at SWTCH.

The short answer, he says, is trying to shift charging to occur overnight and at speeds that all MURB residents have an appropriate range of charge to meet their needs for the following day, which aren’t necessarily a full charge.

“The whole idea is that over the course of the week, and over the course of plugging in every night, is you’re going to get enough [charge] to continue to do your life,” says Overmonds.

“It enables people to feel safe around the anxiety of having no public charging.”