During this year’s Energy Turnaround Days, Karlsruhe’s Environmental Mayor Bettina Lisbach pressed the start button for the intelligent charging management system with the first charging process in the Smart East district. Starting now, the InnoCharge charging optimization system and two newly installed photovoltaic systems with over 200 kWp of solar power will be used for charging.
The expansion of the district with charging infrastructure and photovoltaic systems as well as the implementation and demonstration of new business models for smart charging based on this – and for sustainable energy supply in districts in general – is a joint project of the Smart East consortium with partners from the energy and real estate industry, research and IT. The InnoCharge team provides the optimization for making charging processes more flexible and develops them further.
What does Smart Charging actually mean? The cars are usually parked at the charging station for much longer than they need to charge. Smart Charging uses intelligent charging optimization to shift the charging process so that the surplus photovoltaic electricity is fully used instead of being fed into the grid. This saves costs, avoids grid bottlenecks and reduces CO2 emissions. Now the charging points of the Karlsruhe car-sharing provider Stadtmobil and, in future, all other charging points in the district will be supplied preferentially with cheap, locally generated solar power. The tenant electricity model ensures that both tenants and owners benefit from the expansion of renewable energies.