innovative solutions for USER centric CHarging Infrastructure

Project Information

USER-CHI

Grant agreement ID: 875187

DOI

10.3030/875187

Project closed

EC signature date 18 November 2019

Start date 1 February 2020

End date 31 July 2024

Funded under

• SOCIETAL CHALLENGES - Smart, Green And Integrated Transport

Total cost

€ 17 559 839,81

EU contribution

€ 14 263 188,38

Coordinated by

ETRA INVESTIGACION Y DESARROLLO SA
Spain

Periodic Reporting for period 3 - USER-CHI (innovative solutions for USER centric CHarging Infrastructure)

Reporting period: 2023-02-01 to 2024-07-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

While a dense European interoperable and publicly accessible charging infrastructure network is far from being a reality. the EU's commitment is to ensure full coverage of EV infrastructure across its members, At the same time, citizens are rising their environmental awareness and incorporating new mobility habits, and this new paradigm presents a unique opportunity for the large-scale implementation of electric vehicles.
On the other hand, current business models and revenues generated from charging infrastructure are not sufficient to ensure sustained and healthy market growth. This results in a lack of confidence in the EV sector as a whole and leads to uncertain users hesitating to buy EVs. A similar problem arrives with the regulatory framework: citizens are reluctant to adopt these new modes if the regulation is not clear, and cities do not want to implement new regulatory conditions before analysing the problems of a bigger roll-out of these new mobility modes.

One of the key elements to break this vicious circle is to design and develop charging solutions focused on solving and satisfying the needs and desires of users from different socioeconomic backgrounds and customer segments. A user-centric approach is required, also ensuring interoperability and cross-border roaming capabilities.Also solutions need to be analysed from technical, legal-regulatory, and economic points of view to ensure their largescale viability and replicability.

The USER-CHI objectives are the following: (1) optimising the design of charging networks with a user-centric approach, (2) deploying an interoperability framework and platform, (3) enhancing scalable infrastructure roll out by means of smart grid integration, (4) developing innovative and highly convenient charging systems for a higher market acceptance, (5) co-designing and demonstrating novel and sustainable business and market models, and (6) defining legal and regulatory recommendations for a massive deployment of electric vehicles.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

The user research has been perfomed.
The user stories and technical and legal requirements have been defined
The CLICK implementation and integration was completed. The software prototype was finished.
The development of INFRA has been completed.
Development of INCAR Platform has been completed. INCAR tested against battery of unit tests, ensuring OCPI 2.2 compliance.
The statistical analysis of the city partners’ datasets has been perfomed and the characteristic load profiles have been created.
Development of SMAC has been completed. Integration of SMAC with the INCAR Platform has been carried out. First SMAC tests have taken place in Barcelona.
The INSOC business model was defined. First INSOC prototype is available.
INDUCAR installed and ready to be tested.
All the sites ready to test CLICK. Barcelona, Berlin and Rome ready to test INCAR. Barcelona ready to test INDUCAR and SMAC.
A secured exchange hub (eMoBest) has been established.
The city fingerprints for USER-CHI cities have been completed.
USER-CHI has been presented in relevant standardisation tech committees. Two CEN Workshop Agreements proposals have been agreed for converting results into standard documents. Published standards and under development have been identified.
The project website and social media profiles on Twitter and Linkedin have been set-up.
8 USER-CHI videos have been released.
A series of articles featuring USER-CHI were placed in external publications and websites.
The DMP has been developed, and following its condition of a living document, is being updated every six months.
The research tasks have been monitored and assessed in order to check the ethics compliance and detect potential ethical issues.
The consortium partners have confirmed that either have appointed a Data Protection Officer or keep a detailed data protection policy on file.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

1. Optimisation design of charging networks with a user-centric approach: To accelerate a massive deployment of EVs beyond urban users and garage parkers, a mix of public-private charging solutions must be properly designed and implemented.
2. Deployment of an interoperability framework and platform to support roaming and improve users’ accessibility to charging infrastructure in cities and TEN-T corridors: To make the EVSE network interoperable and satisfy 4 layers of interoperability, USER-CHI will develop INFRA and INCAR.
3. Enhance scalable infrastructure roll out with minimum grid impact by means of smart grid integration: Demand-side management (DSM), is an important instrument that can significantly reduce the need for grid upgrades and additional generation capacity, as well as to facilitate the integration of renewables.
4. Development of innovative and highly convenient charging systems for higher market acceptance: Solar stations for LEVs present a perfect opportunity for the integration of local and decentralized renewable energy. In addition, on-site RES can be interconnected with EVSE by means of a DC electricity network. Inductive charging a simplified and automated charging experience for EV drivers, which is is especially convenient for professional users and vehicle sharing fleets, as well as for disabled drivers.
5. Co-design and demonstration of novel and sustainable business and market models to foster investments and enable replication: Smart vehicle charging developments also have the potential to produce additional value through the opportunity of using RES storage and ancillary energy market services.
6. Definition of legal and regulatory recommendations for a massive electric vehicle deployment: The aim of USER-CHI is to define principle elements and cornerstones of a harmonised regulatory framework for charging infrastructure in Europe.
The expected results for USER-CHI are packaged in 8 products:
P1: CLICK: The Charging Location and Holistic Planning Kit.
P2: STATIONS OF THE FUTURE HANDBOOK: The Handbook will redefine how charging stations are understood, developing the concept of ‘Stations of the Future'.
P3: EMOBEST: The eMoBest is an european cluster focused on e-Mobility and based on a collaboration platform.
P4: INFRA: The interoperability framework (INFRA) defines the set of rules, guidelines and recommendations required to support interoperability.
P5: INCAR: The interoperability, charging and parking platform (INCAR) is an integrated solution that offers innovative and integrated EV-related services.
P6: SMAC: The Smart Charging tool SMAC is a tool that provides smart grid integration and demand management services for slow, medium, fast and ultrafast charging.
P7: INSOC: Is an integrated Solar DC-Charging for LEVs.
P8: INDUCAR: The Inductive Charger for e-Cars INDUCAR is a wireless, user-friendly and highly automated charging solution for passenger cars.
The potential impacts of USER-CHI are:
Impact 1: “Wide user acceptance beyond early adopters, urban users and garage parkers”
Impact 2: “Foster investors to invest in charging infrastructure”
Impact 3: “Determine legal gaps which slow down infrastructure expansion and propose solutions”
Impact 4: “Improve interoperability of vehicle-to-charger and charger-to-infrastructure communication”
Impact 5: “Better grid integration of high-power chargers”
Impact 6: “Standardized charging solutions and payment systems for LEVs for price reduction and higher market acceptance in urban environments”

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