Intelligent IT backend for Hamburg’s charging infrastructure

In Hamburg, the transport transition is already in full swing: more and more electric cars are being seen on the city streets. Registrations of electric vehicles are at a record high throughout Germany. In regional comparisons, Hamburg comes out on top: one in every 55 cars is electrically powered or a plug-in hybrid. The result is a new record of over 37,000 charging operations at Hamburg public charging facilities in January 2021. With charging operations forecast to increase to one million annually by 2023, and the percentage of volatile renewable energies set to increase, it is imperative that the overall security of supply in the electricity distribution grid should continue to be guaranteed. Grid-friendly control of generation and consumption facilities in the electricity grid therefore has an important role to play.

Here too, Hamburg is a trailblazer: the ‘Electrify Buildings for EVs’ pilot project (ELBE) is intensifying grid-compatible expansion of e-mobility outside public spaces and, along with it, the supply security of the electricity grids. Because all the charging stations in the city area supported by the project must grid-friendly and capable of intelligent control. Thanks to a newly developed IT interface, the charging infrastructure can receive signals for adjusting power usage directly from the grid operator, and implement them immediately. In the event of critical capacity utilisation or peak loads in the electricity grid – for example, when many electric vehicles are charging simultaneously – the distribution grid operator transmits signals to the charge point operator (CPO) regarding the maximum power usage at the charging facilities affected. The information is sent to the relevant charging point via a backend at the CPO, and the power usage there is adjusted accordingly. In this way, the reliability of the city electricity supply can continue to be maintained even with the expected boom in electromobility and the rapid increase in charging operations. The technology behind this is complex – in the ELBE project, distribution grid operators, charge point operators and research institutes are collaborating intensively with one another. To provide a nationwide blueprint for grid-friendly integration of charging infrastructure, the IT interface is available to any CPO as a download and for integration: www.elbe-hh.de/infothek/IT-Schnittstelle

The expansion of grid-friendly charging through ELBE is supported by the federal government. Support is provided for equipping residential and commercial properties and company premises with charging facilities for electric vehicles, and is available to legal persons, groups of persons and companies located in Hamburg. A precondition for funding charging points is control of load management via a participating CPO which has implemented the IT interface. All information concerning the project, funding and the specifications of the IT interface can be accessed here: www.elbe-hh.de