Three-Phase Power: Get the Max Out of Your Connection

Grab a seat and a coffee, or whatever you use to hype yourself up, because you’re about to find out what the most underutilized system in your house is.

Your power connection. Specifically, your three-phase power connection.

OK now sip that hypedrink and hear us out. We’re working toward energy accessibility for everyone (read: we’re not telling you to use more and rack up your power bill). What we’ve figured out is a way for you, a smart consumer, to be more efficient in how you use your power connection.

Your power grid connection

The power connection you have in your house (assuming your house is in Europe) is what’s called three-phase. Having a three-phase power connection mostly means that you have a safer and stronger connection, one that’s more stable, which is a good thing.

The three phases are delivered via three wires — literally imagine your house being connected to the grid with three pipes. So much power!

Sort of. Even though you have three wires they alternate power, that just means they play nice and take turns. They even share, but if any one of the wires isn’t sharing evenly you end up with unbalanced lines leading to tripped circuits and interrupted power — no thanks.

When you least expect, it may happen that you have plugged all the appliances to the same phase and breaker trips. Though the breaker tripped, a whopping 66% of the grid connection is unused.

We thought that seemed like an inefficient way to access the powerful grid we have. Not ideal when we want to enable environment-friendly initiatives like mass adoption of electric vehicles. No surprise but power grid connection is a major consideration for anyone considering buying an electric car.

That’s why we got our engineers working on the quality of the connection and not just on the charger. They came up with a way to make all three wires work together through our MultiPhaser.

Making three-phase MultiPhaser

When you have a three-phase connection that isn’t utilized properly you can sometimes end up with an overloaded system.

Well, if the hairdryer usually trips the breakers, then what’s the new plug-in car going to do? What generally happens is that you have to charge the car for hours and even then it may not be fully powered. Remember all that power-sharing and turn-taking that’s happening behind the scenes?

When we came up with the MultiPhaser we made sure it keeps the balance the electrical system is designed for but opens the full capacity it’s able to deliver.

It’s our way of keeping the safety and capability in the three-phase system while also actually using — you know — three phases.

The MultiPhaser keeps the flow between all three wires even. Without the system experiencing an overload in one phase, or wire, there’s no tipping point to cause an interruption. By maintaining an even load, the MultiPhaser maintains the “play nice” attitude that was originally built into the design, which enabled over a century of human innovation.

Because that’s the thing. We don’t need to recreate the entire system to make our power grids more sustainable. Sustainability is all about using what’s already there. VOOL’s MultiPhaser lets you use your three-phase power connection in a way that makes the usage more efficient.

MultiPhaser’s charging applications

We’re first using this technology to address the rising demand from electric vehicle owners —chargers that can reliably and efficiently power up your clean-air transport.

VOOL chargers don’t force you to think about what else is plugged in, they ensure that your electric car is ready to drive when you need it, and they don’t need a special connection, just the one you already have. Better yet, MultiPhaser enabled chargers know when it’s cheaper to charge — we’re all about doing things smarter.

But that’s just thefirst step. We see the MultiPhaser as a whole new way to approach electrical systems. It's a way to maintain balanced loads in the entire building. Those breakers we’re now worried about tripping won’t be needed because the entire system will be smarter and more efficient.

That’s step one in VOOL’s journey to fulfill our mission. In our effort to build and use smarter, we’ll keep engineering better ways to access power — for everyone.  Check out the smartest charging option on the EV market.