For more electromobility in Berlin: Up to 1,600 additional charging points for e-cars in public and private spaces.
As part of the “Immediate Clean Air Program 2017 to 2020”, initiated by the German Federal Ministry of Economics, a consortium of Berlin-based business, research, and politics around the company ubitricity are implementing a project on charging infrastructure.
Berlin, 10.01.19 Berlin will receive up to 1,000 new charging points for e-vehicles in public spaces as well as over 600 more in the private sector from 2019. Funding for this project under the call “Immediate Clean Air Program 2017 to 2020” from the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWi) was announced today by the German Aerospace Center (DLR) as the BMWi’s network coordinator. The project was submitted by the Berlin-based company ubitricity Gesellschaft für verteilte Energiesysteme mbH together with the project partners Distributed Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (DAI-Labor) at the Technical University of Berlin, GASAG Solution Plus GmbH, Hubject GmbH, the Senate Department for the Environment, Transport and Climate Protection and the Reiner Lemoine Institute. The aim of the project is to promote cost-effective charging infrastructure for electromobility in Berlin in order to make a significant contribution to reducing inner-city nitrogen oxide levels.
The “Immediate Clean Air Program” adopted by the federal government in November 2017 has set itself the goal of ensuring better air in cities. It called for concepts for the 90 municipalities with the worst NOx levels, including Berlin. The project, which has now been approved, aims to establish a cost-efficient charging infrastructure with billing in Berlin in a timely manner in order to significantly promote the expansion of electromobility. The focus here is on charging infrastructure in public spaces at converted lampposts for all – as well as for the real estate industry in the area of private and commercial use (e.g. parking garages). Accompanying this, the potential of local coupling of e-mobility and renewable energy is being examined.
“For many years, we have been supporting the establishment of charging facilities as part of the Berlin Model, which aims to ensure the most efficient use of limited public space for area-wide charging infrastructure. The project “Establishment of Mobile Metering Charging Points in Public Space” will set up and test up to 1,000 lantern charging points in the Berlin districts of Marzahn-Hellersdorf and Steglitz-Zehlendorf. The aim is to investigate how public charging points can be set up for residents without permanent and secure access to private parking spaces. We want to know to what extent public lantern charging points can contribute to making electromobility attractive to more and more people. The lantern charging project is to be integrated into the Berlin model. In this way, we are testing new ideas for their economic viability and user-friendliness and promoting electromobility in our city,” explains Jan Thomsen, press spokesman for the Senate Department for the Environment, Transport, and Climate Protection.
“We are grateful to have reached this point with the commitment of all involved and to now also make a significant contribution to the mobility and energy transition in Berlin with our charging infrastructure,” Dr. Frank Pawlitschek, CEO, and Co-Founder of ubitricity said today of the announcement. “Already elsewhere, such as in London, we have now been able to successfully demonstrate that a user-friendly process for setting up charging infrastructure can help establish electromobility as a genuine mobility alternative for residents without their own parking space,” Pawlitschek continued.
The planned mobile metering charging points will be usable with a SmartCable – an intelligent charging cable with an integrated electricity meter for which users sign a contract with an electricity provider of their choice.
As the project progresses, the focus will then be on standardized access to Berlin’s entire charging infrastructure to enable simple, non-discriminatory use of the public charging infrastructure.
Christian Hahn, CEO Hubject, comments: “Hubject was founded to make charging electric vehicles as easy as possible. Therefore, we are happy to do our part to make it even more user-friendly by ensuring that mobile metering also works in our global intercharge network. To this end, we are working with our partners to overcome hurdles such as uniform calibration. This brings us a good deal closer to our goal of establishing a uniform global charging standard.”
In addition to public charging points, the project also includes charging points in private areas. Gunnar Wilhelm, Managing Director of GASAG Solution Plus, commented: “GASAG as a company has been committed to more climate protection in the city for decades. With this project, we will install up to 600 e-charging points in commercial properties and in apartment buildings for Berliners. In doing so, we are linking the heating sector with the mobility sector and thus leveraging efficiencies and synergy effects. This is not only a contribution to more climate protection in the city but at the same time also relieves the electricity grids and thus also supports the energy transition.”
The project, which can also serve as a model project for other municipalities in the future, is being scientifically monitored: “We are delighted to see how the topic of electromobility, which we have been researching for over ten years, is also becoming more and more concrete in our city. With the increase in users and vehicles in the ramp-up phase, the supply of charging infrastructure must of course also grow and, unlike in the past, be developed specifically along the expected spatial and energy demand says Daniel Freund, head of the Smart Energy Systems Application Center at the DAI Laboratory of the TU Berlin. “Mobile metering together with the high expected number of users in the project allows us to test novel data-driven analytics, as well as the development of intelligent methods and tools for the targeted planning and control of charging infrastructure. Congestion and availability bottlenecks should be prevented by these, as well as investments in unnecessary charging infrastructure – an important contribution to making the often so critically discussed topic of electromobility a positive experience for everyone.”
“We are pleased to be involved in the project and are excited to see how the massive deployment of charging infrastructure in urban neighborhoods will affect air quality,” said Oliver Arnhold, division manager of Mobility with Renewable Energy at the Reiner Lemoine Institute. “At RLI, we are particularly interested in bringing together the various findings of the project partners. In previous research projects, we have found that it is important to clearly bundle the very complex aspects of charging infrastructure development, such as approval processes, emissions, and grid impacts. In this way, it is possible to create a compact decision-making basis for further expansion. With this in mind, we will also look at the potential for local coupling of e-mobility and renewable energy in urban areas.”
The project partners will soon provide information on the progress of the project on the platform www.neueberlinerluft.de.
Other supporters of the project are:
Berlin Agency for Electromobility eMO, Berlin Partner for Business and Technology GmbH, GASAG AG, EUREF AG.
Press contact Hubject
Hubject GmbH | EUREF Campus 22 | D-10829 Berlin
Managing Director: Christian Hahn
press@hubject.com | hubject.com