Load balancing for a home charger

The main fuse is the ceiling, per phase. An 11 kW three-phase charge is about 16 A on each phase, so a 16 A house has no room left and a 20 or 25 A house has only a little. Load balancing lowers the car instead of tripping the fuse. A house with plenty of margin may not need it.

Static balancing sets a fixed ceiling on the charger, below the main fuse, and leaves a margin for the house. It needs no meter. The margin sits unused most hours, and a second charger does not inherit the share of a car that is unplugged.

Dynamic balancing measures the house and gives the car what is left, phase by phase. It matters most on a 16, 20, or 25 A fuse. The measurement has to watch each phase, because a car on one phase can overload that phase while the others are free.

Current transformers around the incoming cables are the usual meter. The other path is the customer port on the electricity meter, called the HAN or P1 port in Sweden. Many grid companies leave it switched off until you ask them to open it. Not every charger reads that port. The installer matches the method to the model.

Two cars must share the fuse. Static balancing gives each a fixed share. Dynamic balancing gives the spare current to the cars that are actually plugged in. Chargers from different brands do not always speak to each other, and two sockets on one unit are not automatically two independent chargers.

None of the compared models measures the whole house without an extra accessory. Zaptec Go needs Zaptec Sense. Zaptec Go 2 needs Zaptec Sense or a compatible solution. Zaptec Pro shares load between its own chargers, but the house still needs Zaptec Sense. Easee Charge Max balances up to three chargers locally and needs an Easee Equalizer for the house. Charge Amps Halo needs a Charge Amps Amp Guard. Charge Amps Aura shares between its two sockets and needs an Amp Guard for the house. DEFA Power needs a DEFA Balancer.

Some electricity suppliers steer charging from their own app. Tibber does not make a charger. Tibber Store sells other brands, including several models in this comparison. Tibber’s own hardware is Tibber Pulse, a reader for the meter’s HAN port. It measures the house and is used for load balancing.

Smart charging and load balancing in the Tibber app require a Tibber electricity contract. Support covers several chargers in the comparison, including Zaptec Go, Charge Amps Halo, and Charge Amps Aura. Pulse does not automatically replace the manufacturer’s own accessory. Ask the installer which path applies, and whether the HAN port has to be opened.

Ask the quote to say whether balancing is static or dynamic, where the meter sits, and the per-phase ceiling. The accessory for each compared model is named above and on the model page.