Eneco e-mobility

Eneco e-mobility (Eneco) is one of the leading CPOs and EMSPs, which operates more than 25,000 public and home charge points across the Netherlands, Belgium, and Germany.

In 2021, Eneco’s previous hardware-plus-backend service provider for about 3,500 charge points opted to phase out its legacy software platform. Eneco wanted to simplify asset management and upgrade its charging management functional capabilities at the same time. Additionally, the operator needed to meet the price transparency norms mandated by the Netherland’s Authority for Consumers and Markets (ACM) in the previous year. The rules state that consumers, or EV drivers, in this case, must be able to clearly see all costs – from the price of the recharge cards to the invoice detailing their charging sessions. The regulation thus calls for CPOs to offer ad hoc charging and share real-time transaction data with the drivers.

To meet its requirements and ensure business scalability, Eneco decided to migrate its 3,500 charge points under a single, future-proof GreenFlux platform.

Challenge

Migrating charge stations to a different software provider is usually a tedious and costly process. This project posed primarily three major challenges: the need for the same communication language, secure path communication, and project management.

A large group of charge points from Eneco’s previous manufacturer were G2 (generation 2) chargers that used the older version of OCPP (1.5 SOAP). Plus, there were some G3 (Generation 3) chargers, which used OCPP 1.6 JSON, and several customisations and deviations of the protocols made by the existing backoffice provider in the early days of EV charging. The first challenge for GreenFlux was to accommodate different protocol versions and address potential communication issues.

Ensuring safe communication with a secure data exchange between Eneco’s charge station telecom SIM card providers and the backend platform provided a second challenge.

And third, with six different parties involved in the large-scale migration, the team needed to facilitate efficient cooperation to deliver the project on time.

Solution

The hardware-agnostic GreenFlux platform accommodated charge stations leveraging a variety of OCPP protocol versions, including 1.5 SOAP, 1.5 JSON, and 1.6 JSON, plus deviations. The experts in GreenFlux team performed several integration tests, customised paths, and created an entirely new communication channel to optimise communication for various charge point configurations. Plus, the GreenFlux team ensured only stations with the latest firmware and correct configuration settings were migrated.

Security is one of the core principles of GreenFlux’s product design principles and the platform is ISO27001 and 27002-certified. The GreenFlux team set up private APN and VPN data connections with Eneco’s SIM card providers to achieve desired security configuration. This avoided the need to physically change any SIM card in the charge stations. “Creating these connections while ensuring safety is a major milestone that we achieved together with GreenFlux,” said Art Speksnijder, Product Owner IT, Eneco eMobility.

GreenFlux conducted the migration in a phased manner thereby avoiding a complete shutdown of charge points at any point in time causing distress to EV drivers. With over 10 years of operational experience in managing charge stations, GreenFlux managed coordination between six different parties and handled the complicated technical requirements right from preparation to execution to the final migration of 3,500 charge points.

“Overall, the collaboration, commitment, and knowledge that GreenFlux offered helped make this migration a success,” added Art.

Result

GreenFlux successfully migrated Eneco’s 3,500 charge points to its own backend platform. The outcome provided Eneco with operational efficiency of its entire network, secure data communication, and simpler asset management. Eneco ensured future scalability of its business by operating all the charge points under one, future-proof platform. Besides, the company met the EU’s price transparency requirements and gained access to real-time data sharing and ad hoc payments.

GreenFlux is competent to handle large-scale, complicated projects as was proven with this project that required technical expertise and coordination between six stakeholders. The backend platform supports all current and legacy versions of OCPP and can perform any required integrations and customisations for protocols. The GreenFlux team facilitates efficient project management, customises any necessary technical changes when dealing with legacy systems, ensures technicalities are by the standards and meets all safety concerns.

E-REDES 

E-REDES is mainland Portugal’s distribution system operator, and is responsible for the management of the voltage grid and operating 228 thousand kilometres of distribution network. E-REDES applies energy efficiency solutions and develops a smarter energy distribution grid across Portugal. The company is committed to promoting sustainable mobility and electrification, as part of the goals defined by the EDP Group. E-REDES intends to have a charge point for each electric vehicle in their fleet.  

Challenge

In 2020, over 12% of new car sales in Portugal were electric, and forecasts suggest that the uptake of electric vehicles will only accelerate in the coming years. There is a risk that grid capacity may become insufficient to power the required number of charge stations for EVs in many areas across the country. Therefore, Portugal needs to prepare its electric grid for the influx of EVs and ensure a smooth transition to low-carbon mobility. E-REDES started an innovative EV charging project at their office in Setúbal to test smart charging technology from GreenFlux.  

Solution

The E-REDES charging site consists of eighteen charging points connected to the GreenFlux platform, and a local smart meter from Smappee that measures the energy consumption of the office building. The installed solar panels on the roof of the building act as input of the smart charging algorithm, increasing the available power capacity. If the consumption of the building is high, the GreenFlux platform receives a signal and reduces the power available to EVs. The meter data also shows whether an electric vehicle is charging single- or triple-phase. As a result, smart charging per phase can be applied to increase the number of EVs charging simultaneously. GreenFlux’s fallback scenarios were tested rigorously, as proving out these capabilities under real-life test situations is critical for E-REDES to guarantee a safe operation of the grid. 

Result

Using smart charging, E-REDES can reduce their investment in electrical infrastructure. There are already multiple E-REDES buildings with charge stations in place waiting to roll out GreenFlux’s smart charging technology. With the site in Setúbal, E-REDES has a future-proof charging site and an excellent use case to roll out to their other offices. In the future, DC chargers will also be added to the Setúbal site and will share the available charging capacity with AC chargers. Thanks to smart charging, capacity between AC and DC chargers can be shared intelligently. In this case, the session of the DC charger will be prioritized over the charging sessions of the AC chargers. Moreover, a charging app will be introduced to E-REDES employees. In the app, the employees are able to find available chargers in the E-REDES charging network at all their company’s buildings across Portugal. 

More information about the project can be found here

Challenge

The world is treading towards a carbon-neutral future. On this journey, transport electrification will play a crucial role in reducing emissions and building an energy-efficient society, but it comes with certain challenges. The electric vehicle (EV) market is growing exponentially, and the electricity required to charge EVs will create additional demand and stress on the electricity grid, especially at the local level. To maintain a balance between power demand and supply, smart technology management is vital in all parts of a power system – generation, transmission, and distribution.

One way to cope with this problem is to meet the new demand with decarbonised electricity, or electricity produced from natural, clean sources.

The Netherlands is one of many countries seeking to reduce greenhouse emissions (like CO2) to zero by 2050. To meet this goal, the Dutch government announced in 2016 that all passenger vehicles and public transport buses must comply with zero emissions and utilise renewable energy sources, such as wind and solar, by 2030.

CONNECT

CONNECT is an initiative by a consortium of 19 partners from five countries of the European Union (EU) to create an ecosystem of integrated solar panels and battery storage to reduce dependency on primary energy sources and thus reduce the carbon dioxide (CO2) footprint. Use cases were conducted in Germany, Spain, Italy, and the Netherlands.

In the Netherlands, a subset of the CONNECT consortium – Enexis Netbeheer, Heliox, TU/e, GreenFlux, and Gemeente ‘s-Hertogenbosch (Den Bosch) – created this unique ‘energy management ecosystem’ at the Transferium location at the Deutersestraat in Den Bosch. The project intended to find efficient ways to charge electric busses and passenger vehicles while making the best use of renewable production and storage.

Solution

Within the CONNECT project, the Transferium demonstration site integrates solar panels, a power converter, stationary battery storage, a high-power city bus charger and 26 charge points to charge EVs. This is all combined using a smart energy management system, in a first-of-its-kind ecosystem set up inside the building to optimise low-carbon local energy production and use less power from the grid. The 1,500 solar panels installed on the roof of Transferium can supply up to twice the required power demand of the building. This is how it works:

Busses, passenger vehicles and the Transferium itself can draw power either directly from the solar panels, the building grid, the stationary battery, or any combination of these, depending upon demand and the state of charge of the battery. During the day, EVs take energy from solar panels, and when demand rises additional power is taken from the stationary battery, and eventually from the grid. On one hand, the ecosystem anticipates sunlight and stored energy and automatically switches to the grid when needed. On the other hand, if there is any surplus energy from the solar panels, it will be stored in the stationary battery. If the stationary storage is fully charged, any remaining excess energy is transferred back to the grid.

A cloud-based smart energy management platform, provided by GreenFlux, acts as the brain behind this ecosystem and ensures a balance between energy generation and demand. Since the system utilises multiple energy sources, essential functions such as lighting and traffic lights continue to work in case of a power failure.

The smart energy management platform records the power flows from energy generation, battery storage, energy consumption by EVs, and the building itself. Using its intelligent management tools, the platform sends out smart charging signals to the 26 charge sockets installed inside the building for the cars and to the fast charger outside for busses. By dynamically controlling the charging speed of every socket, the platform ensures that the load on the transformer is kept as low as possible, saving significant costs.

Result

The smart management ecosystem helped reduce peak electricity demand by 71%, which ultimately resulted in a less-costly grid connection investment for charging busses and passenger vehicles. Simultaneously, with the smart charging technologies developed in this project, it is possible to install ten times more charge stations at the Transferium while still realising the 71% peak demand reduction. As a result, the Transferium in ‘s-Hertogenbosch is now one of the most future-proof and scalable greenest buildings of the country.

More details can be found on the project website, LinkedIn page, and our press release.

This project has received funding from the Electronic Component Systems for European Leadership Joint undertaking under grant agreement No 737434. This Joint Undertaking receives support from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme and Germany, Slovakia, Netherlands, Spain, Italy.

INVADE

The acronym INVADE is derived from the objective for the integration of electric vehicles and batteries in the distribution network for empowering mobile, distributed and centralized energy storage. INVADE is a European subsidised project from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation program that started in the beginning of 2017 and ran until the end of 2019.

Challenge

Increasing use of wind and sun and an enormous increase in electric charging is causing large-scale fluctuations on the energy network. The growth in electricity production from sun and wind also causes greater price variations in the energy markets, an indication that it is becoming more difficult to match the supply and demand of sustainable electricity generation within the energy system.

Along with 12 other parties, GreenFlux took part in a large-scale smart charging trial, focusing on households and offices, as part of the European INVADE project to prove how smart charging can overcome the lack of supply and overflowing demand. An important prerequisite for the project was that EV riders would not be affected by smart charging and that it would be a scalable solution without modifications of the existing equipment.

Solution

The 50 homes included in the household case had at least one electric car, a private charging station, and preferably solar panels. Eight locations comprising a total of 199 charging points were included in the office case, ranging in size from a few charging stations to 98 at each location.
GreenFlux applied smart charging at these EV charging points, demonstrating that a primary benefit of smart charging at offices is grid reinforcement cost avoidance.

By not charging all cars simultaneously, a cost savings of a quarter of a million euros could be achieved in one case due to eliminating the need to improve electrical infrastructure. The annual additional network operator costs of 80,000 euros that would have been necessary without smart charging were made redundant as a result of running the algorithms used by GreenFlux. Similar savings can be achieved with households, whereby the savings are made to the network operator.

Result

The INVADE project demonstrated that smart charging can be used to overcome the current and anticipated challenges of energy fluctuations and price variations in the market. GreenFlux’s smart charging approach uniquely addresses these challenges simultaneously with a single solution.

The flexibility that electric vehicles can offer, especially when looking forward to a future where millions of cars run on electric power, is of great value to the energy system. The INVADE project has shown that if the solutions are scaled up, the total flexible power that electric cars can offer will be six to nine times greater than our current total power demand per day.

More information about the project can be found here

Electric Nation

Western Power Distribution is the distribution network operator responsible for delivering electricity to 7.8 million customers across the Midlands, South West England, and South Wales. Electric Nation is the customer-facing brand of CarConnect, a project funded by Western Power Distribution and Network Innovation Allowance. WPD’s collaboration partners in the project are EA Technology, DriveElectric, Lucy Electric GridKey, and TRL.

Challenge

More and more electric vehicles are seen on the roads of the UK. This is fantastic news, but it also provides a new challenge for the British electricity networks. Can the UK’s electricity infrastructure cope with the new demand of electrified transport? Research shows that the uptake of electric vehicles can potentially stress the power grid.

If 30% of all cars are electric, an investment of 2.5 billion pounds would have to be made to fortify the existing grid if capacity management is not utilized. The Electric Nation project researched if smart charging, provided by GreenFlux, could avoid the need to perform expensive network upgrades.

Solution

GreenFlux’s solution: Capacity management with load balancing. In its search for solutions, EA Technology set up the Electric Nation project on behalf of Western Power Distribution. This project combines smart technologies with new regulations so that cars can be charged quickly without overloading the local network. Already in 700 households, this is the largest Smart Charging EV trial in the world. As a pioneer in the field of smart charging, GreenFlux supports the Electric Nation Project in testing various smart charging strategies.

The data that is collected over a three-year period (2016- 2019) has helped us understand the impact of the charging of electric cars at home on the electricity network. The project was split into three trials to imitate different scenarios. Over the years, trial participants experience periods of no management, and management without and then with apps to enable them to interact with the Smart Charging systems.

The GreenFlux back-office system monitors the overall demand of chargers under their control. Depending on need, the system can diminish total demand by instructing individual chargers to reduce the power available to charging EVs. So that trial participants could interact with the Smart Charging systems, an app was introduced. Under GreenFlux, drivers utilized the application to choose if they needed to prioritise time or cost, and the charger would charge straight away or only charge when off-peak. Requesting High Priority for a charging session excluded the participant from demand management for that session.

Over 60% of trial participants changed their app preference away from the default “Optimise Time”, mostly to the “Minimise Cost” option, thus avoiding the peak price. Demand management was no longer required shortly after introducing the scheme. Meanwhile, a sharp increase in demand was observed at the cheap, overnight, price boundary, as many delayed charging events were switched on. This could lead to negative impacts on various parts of the electricity system such as step changes in voltage caused by sudden changes in demand, or issues with generation capacity. Nevertheless, the new peak in demand could be easily mitigated by implementing randomised or time-band switching.

The trial concluded with participants being financially incentivised to change their charging behaviour, producing clear indications that this could be a successful strategy for addressing distribution network congestion issues that could be created by EV charging at home.

Result

We can deploy our smart charging technology to avoid an overload of the sub-station at high-load intervals. When enabled, smart charging will cause the sub-station to provide information to our cloud platform via an event-based algorithm. Using the latest information gathered from these stations, we can shift power grid resources appropriately, preventing overloads on the sub-station. Our smart charging algorithm considers how full or empty a battery is, allowing us to give priority to cars that need it more.

At Electric Nation, GreenFlux provided a smartphone app that enables customers to request charging priority themselves, overruling our smart charging algorithm when necessary. Moreover, the algorithm controls the chargers in a dynamic way, so all cars are full in the morning with the most efficient energy usage. The use of an app seemed to have an effect on nudging users into economising, thus reducing stress on the local power network.

Time of Use incentives give off an impression of being exceptionally successful at moving demand away from the evening peak – especially when bolstered by Smart Charging through a smartphone application. Smart Charging can support the introduction and management of ToU based charging and can support a means to manage any negative consequences of mass uptake of ToU incentives. The positive reaction to the ToU tariff scheme shows that it is a suitable technique for curbing peak evening demand and that having control by means of a smartphone application is popular.

Working with smart charging enables 10 times more efficient capacity allocation and circumvents the need for potentially billions in additional capital to provide new charging infrastructure.

Eneco eMobility

Eneco is a producer and supplier of natural gas, electricity, and heat, and a leader in the European energy transition movement with its smart, sustainable, and affordable product and service offering. Eneco eMobility installs, hosts, and maintains an extensive home and work EV charging network, supporting drivers and businesses shift from ICE to electric.

Challenge

Eneco wanted to cut the cost of maintaining their own proprietary platform to manage their charging network and keep pace with rapid technological developments in the industry. The company manages a charging network of approximately 13,000 chargers at home and semi-public locations and supports 39,000 drivers through their own services.

Solution

Eneco selected GreenFlux’s EV charging platform with API integration to their existing CRM and ERP systems. Within the GreenFlux platform, the Eneco team configures and manages a variety of functions, including product packages, charge station set up, and driver help desk. Eneco is completely free to connect any charge station of their choice, whether AC or DC. Further, Eneco gained access to GreenFlux’s roaming contracts and connections with various peer-to-peer parties, hubs, and clearinghouses.

Result

The result is a cost-efficient, state-of-the-art system that evolves constantly without taking focus away from Eneco’s core business. Eneco takes advantage of new developments and software updates deployed by GreenFlux to adjust to the changing needs and regulations of the global EV charging market. Eneco uses the full breadth of the GreenFlux EV charging platform to efficiently operate as a charge point operator and service provider, as well as handle transactions.

The platform allows Eneco to manage charger and driver additions, operations and technical tasks, and their own billing processes. Using the GreenFlux platform, Eneco operates and handles the transactions on all 13,000 charge points, performing around 144,000 transactions per month. Additionally, 39,000 EV drivers use GreenFlux-powered Eneco charge cards, providing them full interoperability.

Fudura

Fudura provides services that business customers can use to optimize their energy supply, ranging from advice and energy flow measurements to infrastructure design and construction. Fudura also leases and maintains charge stations, transformers, and switchgear installations.

Challenge

Fudura’s fleet of electric cars that employees drive is a mix of cars used for maintenance and employee-owned vehicles. Fudura wanted a way to accurately track and manage their electric fleet, including detailed reporting down to cost center level in order to monitor the charging cost per car/employee.

Solution

GreenFlux offered a full-service fleet reporting and management solution that provided detailed data needed to report on billing and reimbursement. Each employee driving an electric car has a price package for charging. When changes occur in the fleet, Fudura passes on the information about the fleet, car, or EV driver to the operations team where changes are made since this is a fully outsourced solution. At any given moment, Fudura can use the features of the EV charging platform to take full control themselves.

Result

The result is a reliable charging infrastructure linked to user pricing packages and cars in their network. The fleet manager has full control and insight based on a monthly report. The platform allows calculations of complex information, such as license plates, personnel number, cost center, and more for customized reporting.

Enexis

Enexis is a distribution system operator, supplying electricity and natural gas to customers in the provinces of Groningen, Drenthe, Overijssel, North Brabant, and Limburg. They are responsible for constructing, servicing, developing, and operating the electricity and gas grids.

Challenge

Enexis wanted to expand their electric vehicle fleet but encountered infrastructure constraints at their office headquarters. When the building consumed its peak electric load, less electricity was available for charging electric vehicles. Enexis wanted a solution where they could maximize available charging potential outside the peak, only restricting charging station loads during the lunch peak.

Solution

GreenFlux came up with a solution that optimizes utilization of the electric supply capacity. The GreenFlux EV charging platform performs dynamic load balancing functionality together with an online metering platform. The metering platform provides actual energy consumption of the building, and the GreenFlux Platform processes this information for load balancing. As a result, electric vehicles are charged intelligently; reducing the load on the power grid while allowing drivers to consistently leave with full batteries.

Result

The result is that on the same grid connection, 10 times more chargers can be installed. Our experience shows that by applying dynamic load balancing, the maximum number of charge points that can be installed on one location is up to 10 times higher than in the case of uncontrolled charging. For this reason, additional investment to increase the grid capacity is not necessary. Moreover, by using guest charging, the return of investment on infrastructure will be 5 times quicker than without.

TotalEnergies

TotalEnergies is one of the world’s biggest energy companies. The company is a broad energy company that produces and markets energies on a global scale: oil and biofuels, natural gas and green gases, renewables and electricity.

Challenge

Need for a flexible and open management platform. TotalEnergies needed a flexible and open management platform that was partially outsourced and could interface with their monitoring systems. They were looking for a flexible and open management system for billing transactions, monitoring, maintenance, and 24-hour support for their end users.

Solution

GreenFlux’s solution: Professional Platform Package. TotalEnergies actively participates in tenders for public charging infrastructure. The demands of innovative solutions are very high in these tenders, which are provided to TotalEnergies by GreenFlux. TotalEnergies performs the operation and runs their customer helpdesk using the GreenFlux Operator Portal Professional. An API was configured to exchange charging data for reporting and monitoring purposes so TotalEnergies can solve charging issues quickly for the electric vehicle driver.

GreenFlux supports TotalEnergies in roaming from e-mobility service providers (eMSP) that use their network to guarantee a smooth, interoperable system. Based on detailed monthly reports, TotalEnergies has an overview of the number of charge stations, transactions and which eMSPs have been using their network for business case purposes. Using Power BI, a special KPI dashboard has been developed for the monitoring of charge stations and transactions to maintain a maximum uptime and high level of customer support.

Result

GreenFlux’s platform gives TotalEnergies a flexible and open system. It produces detailed reports and connects to their internal systems, allowing TotalEnergies to perform their own data analyses. For customer support functionality, TotalEnergies uses GreenFlux for clear dashboards with real time status information and remote commands. They also use the Operator Portal Professional to outsource the software set-up of new charge stations and wholesale billing so they can focus on the operation side of business.