On May 16, 2023, the fokus.energie Energy Congress 2023 took place in Karlsruhe and online, where selected best-practice examples for climate protection and the energy transition were presented to inspire imitation. InnoCharge was there: Dr. Manuel Lösch gave a presentation on the advantages of the InnoCharge charging optimization in the Smart East pilot district in Karlsruhe. He also discussed the cooperation with partners and the hurdles and challenges overcome.
After welcoming speeches by Dr. Franziska Brantner MdB, Parliamentary State Secretary at the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Protection, and Dr. Frank Mentrup, Mayor of the City of Karlsruhe, there were short presentations for the target groups of companies and trades, among others.
Dr. Manuel Lösch presented the innovative InnoCharge charging optimization for low-cost charging in company parking lots based on experience from the Smart East district in Karlsruhe, which is being funded by the Baden-Württemberg Ministry of the Environment to demonstrate new business models for the energy transition. In this district, 50+ charging points for electric vehicles and a doubling of the photovoltaic capacity of 200+ kWp already installed during the project period are currently being implemented.
The presentation showed how InnoCharge charging optimization in the “Charge@Work” scenario ensures that locally generated, low-cost PV electricity is primarily charged from the roof, that any additional electricity required is preferably procured at low cost according to spot market prices and that local grid bottlenecks in the property and expensive peak loads are avoided.
The other presentations also repeatedly made it clear that cooperation is needed for innovations in the increasingly digitalized energy world. That is why experienced partners are cooperating in Smart East to provide a coordinated overall solution for optimized charging. In addition to InnoCharge charging optimization, this ranges from the charging power contract (BES Badische Energie-Servicegesellschaft mbH) to the processing of PV tenant electricity (Solarize Energy Solutions GmbH), dynamic exchange-based electricity prices (Stadtwerke Karlsruhe GmbH) and data integration, e.g. for billing and visualization of the optimized charging processes or for future expansion to include other energy systems (Seven2one Informationssysteme GmbH). The demonstration project is complemented by the valuable expertise of the scientific partners (FZI Research Center for Information Technology, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology).
As a software provider, InnoCharge takes over the operational charging optimization for low-cost and green charging processes in the implemented overall system. By making charging processes more flexible, InnoCharge helps charging point operators to save costs and increase profits, which ultimately also benefits parking lot tenants in the form of low charging electricity prices and low CO2 emissions.