IoT in electric vehicle charging - webinar: questions & answers
Recently we hosted a webinar about IoT (Internet of Things) in electric vehicle (EV) charging. Here you can find some of the questions and answers.
Martin Karlsson, Chief Digital Officer from Bee Charging Solutions and Göran Näslund, Strategic Segment Manager from Telenor Connexion are answering the questions from the webinar attendees related to automotive IoT.
What about harmonizing payment methods for different charging networks? Electric vehicle owner keychains get very heavy with all the different tags.
Martin Karlsson answers: Historically and in the early days of public charging, this was an issue and customers were worried about the need of signing up to a wide range of services who all issued a physical charge tag/key. I think the industry will over time mature and roaming across all service providers will be smooth and transparent. However, today most operators in Sweden offer the possibility to charge using their company specific app and if you are a customer with one of the leading operators, such as Bee, you will have a large public charging network that will most likely meet your needs.
Do you have on-street charging stations? If so, can customers book them?
Martin Karlsson answers: Yes, all our public charging stations are in public areas. In Sweden, we have very high availability on our charging stations, so we see the need to provide a function to book time slots for charging.
What is the range of power (kW) Bee charging solutions can offer?
Martin Karlsson answers: Bee offers public charging in the power range of 11 to 100 kW.
Do you provide different kinds of electricity, e.g. hydropower electricity, nuclear electricity, etc.?
Martin Karlsson answers: All charging stations owned by Bee use green electricity from renewable sources.
Are EV cars carbon neutral as far as the electricity they use compared to the petrol/diesel combustion engine cars use?
Martin Karlsson answers: Here is a tool from MIT to look at the comparisons between different fuel options.
Are the figures shown today for Sweden alone?
Martin Karlsson answers: Yes, for more information about the calculations can be found here.
What is the outlook for Europe and your plans to grow beyond the Nordic region?
Martin Karlsson answers: Our focus for the moment is Sweden.
Any plans to expand (electronic vehicle charging points) in Asia?
Martin Karlsson answers: No (same answer as above).
What is Bee’s take on charging more than one car in home solutions for 2 scenarios 1. visiting friends or several cars in the household 2. public charging from private persons
Martin Karlsson answers: 1.the possibility of allowing visiting friends and family is possible today and 2. for now this seems like a small market, but this might change in the future and become an interesting possibility.
Is the GWh you had in the slide cumulative, or for one year?
Martin Karlsson answers: Is not cumulative and shows how much kWh or km we have achieved in one year.
What is the role of IoT in electric vehicle charging?
Göran Näslund answers: For a public EV charger, IoT connectivity is crucial as without it, it will not be possible to charge a car. There are several transactions that have to take place and information that needs to be exchanged. The first obvious one is the payment transaction and/or authorization of a membership card allowing a charging to take place. In addition, communication with the grid, pricing updates, monitoring of the charger and more. Communication technology can vary depending on requirements, but as it is mission critical, the common one today is LTE. Find more information about IoT connection types and IoT communications in our What is IoT–a guide to IoT terminology.
Are you using IoT connectivity also for charging station asset management, e.g. condition monitoring, predictive maintenance etc., and how important is this business value related to the consumer services?
Martin Karlsson answers: Yes, we use IoT connectivity for asset management ingoing service operations. A reliable charging network is key to be successful as a charge point operator and we do that by constantly monitoring our charging network together with preventive maintenance actions. Consumers need to rely that a charging station is working when they plan their journeys, so the value of operating a reliable network is very high.
Do you provide charging stations “as a Service” for B2B customers?
Martin Karlsson answers: Not at this point in time.
Can you describe the demand for communication (related to IoT solutions) within your ecosystem?
Martin Karlsson answers: Connectivity is key for all our services and operations, so the demand for reliable communication is very high.
What is the efficiency of your chargers, i.e. how much electricity is lost during charging?
Martin Karlsson answers: Our public charge point provides between 11kW to 100 kW. Almost no electricity is lost during a charging session.
What is the role of Telenor Connexion in EV charging market?
Göran Näslund answers: Telenor Connexion is providing connectivity to customers worldwide. We can provide our services in 200 markets with access to 500+ mobile networks using a single SIM. We have the IoT professional services that help customers design, build, implement and operate their devices. Depending on the application and how critical it is for the business, we tailor-make the solution and provide Service Level Agreements (SLA), for that.
How long does it take to charge? How do you manage people queuing up to charge?
Martin Karlsson answers: It is very different depending on the need and the situation, but people tend to stay and charge between 20 to 80 minutes on our public charging stations. At the moment, we have not really seen too much queuing as we have a large public charging network with plenty of capacity, but this might change over time and functions to manage queuing might be introduced
Setting up charging stations all over the place can solve the amount of charging points, but will the electrical grid and electrical cables be able to handle the massive expansion of EV chargers? Is there a need for large load balancers?
Martin Karlsson answers: The electric grid and power system are changing a lot now and are facing many challenges. The introduction of EV-charging is one of them, but also the change from large, centralised production units (like nuclear power) towards small decentralised production units (like solar or Wind). All parties that are involved in the power distribution are working hard to make this transition. EV:s are not only part of the problem, but could also be a part of the solution, as the introduction of electric vehicles means we are connecting a large amount of batteries to the grid. Batteries that actually might be helpful in the transition.
What is Martin’s view on a common view on public EV chargers, if they are working, if they are busy, common way to pay etc? People traveling in electric cars need to know en route to avoid battery anxiety.
Martin Karlsson answers: For our charging network, this type of information is available in our app and again, therefore, connectivity is highly important to ensure the information we provide is up to date.
