What are the Five Levels?
The term “smart charging” means different things to different people. At Stekker, we developed a framework — the Five Levels of Smart Charging — to bring clarity to the conversation. Each level represents a step up in intelligence, automation, and grid awareness.
Level 1: Manual Timer
At the most basic level, users manually set a timer on their charger or vehicle. For example, programming a charging station to start at 10:00 AM to coincide with peak solar production. It works, but it does not scale and relies entirely on the user remembering to adjust settings.
Level 2: Scheduled Planning
Computers take over the scheduling. The system analyses day-ahead energy market prices and estimates behavioural patterns to determine optimal charging windows automatically. Several apps and pilot programmes have emerged at this level, but the approach has clear limits — modern grid congestion increasingly demands real-time adjustments that planned schedules cannot deliver.
Level 3: Real-Time Steering
At Level 3, charging adjusts dynamically to live conditions. When a connection’s capacity limit is reached, or the grid operator signals congestion, the system modifies charging power instantly. This is where meaningful smart charging begins — but a coordination challenge emerges: if every connection reacts identically to the same signal, the resulting simultaneous switching creates new peaks instead of solving them.
Level 4: Collaborative Optimisation
Level 4 reintroduces the human element to coordinate different technologies, stakeholders, and incentives. The goal is to align all energy consumers at a location — chargers, HVAC, battery storage, production equipment — into a self-regulating local smart grid. Success requires balancing risks, financial models, and operational rights across all participating parties.
Level 5: Autonomous System
The final level envisions a fully autonomous, self-regulating ecosystem. Generation, storage, and consumption coordinate automatically across a decentralised, meshed, international network. This level remains a future vision — by the time we approach it, the technology landscape will have evolved so dramatically that the actual implementation is difficult to predict today.
Where does Stekker operate?
Stekker provides Level 3 and Level 4 smart charging. Our energy management system steers charging in real time based on grid capacity, energy prices, solar production, and local constraints. Through our collaborative features — including priority management, load balancing, and integration with building energy systems — we help organisations move beyond simple scheduling into true grid-aware optimisation.
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