In the context of sustainable urban development, electric vehicles play a crucial role in reducing greenhouse gas emissions and promoting clean transportation solutions. By integrating electric vehicles into the electricity market and grid operation, InnoCharge enables price-optimized and sustainable charging. The intelligent, forward-looking market and grid-oriented algorithms required to optimize charging processes have been tested in practice by InnoCharge over the past three years in a consortium together with electricity suppliers, charging point, and property operators – and have been brought to product maturity. A recent article in the 50.2 magazine on the focus topic “Smart Districts” provides insights into the innovation project in the east of Karlsruhe, which was completed last year.
Expansion of PV and charging infrastructure leads to significant reduction in CO2 emissions
The research and demonstration project focused on four fields of action: Climate protection, Digitalization, Business models, and Participation. By investing around 750,000 euros in photovoltaic systems with an output of 620 kWp, the proportion of solar-generated energy was increased from one to 22 percent, which reduced the district’s CO2 emissions by 20 percent – equivalent to 270 tons per year. In addition, a charging infrastructure with 46 charging points was set up in the district to integrate e-mobility.
Development and demonstration of a scalable end-to-end offering for Smart Charging with dynamic electricity prices
InnoCharge ensures the optimized operation of the charging points in the district and the cost-optimized purchase of charging electricity. The charging points are operated by the local energy supplier, a subsidiary of the regional municipal utility, as are the PV systems, which are operated in the tenant electricity model. As much electricity as possible from the solar systems is used to charge the vehicles in the district. For the remaining electricity, the system uses dynamic electricity prices and prefers to charge when the electricity price on the spot market (European Power Exchange) is low. In addition, the InnoCharge system avoids expensive peak loads during charging and enables the use of flexibility during charging to stabilize the public power grid (German § 14a EnWG).
InnoCharge thus helps Charging Point Operators (CPOs) to use the various options for monetizing flexibility with minimal effort and to offer sustainably attractive charging. Ultimately, the charging point operator’s customers benefit from the automated charging decisions made in the background, as they receive charging energy at a low, static price – and are otherwise not confronted with the necessary complexity.
Stationary district energy storage and bidirectional charging
The showcase district for smart energy management is currently being further developed as part of an EU-wide project with five other districts from Luxembourg, Belgium, Croatia, Spain and Portugal. Topics include battery storage, bidirectional charging of electric vehicles, dynamic electricity tariffs, green car sharing, sector coupling and an optimized heat supply with flexible heat pumps. The InnoCharge Smart Charging Platform, which is already in operational use, is also being used for this purpose and extended accordingly.