EV-elocity: Trialling Vehicle to Grid technology with Fleets

What does it do?

The NetX charge point extender is a three-socket charger that can replace an existing single charge point. The NetX Trio charger technology is being tested as part of the Innovate UK supported ‘Electric Vehicle (EV) Network Extender (NetX) Field Trial’.

Application

Advanced engineering consultancy and provision of the Hubeleon charge point management system which would support 15 Vehicle to Grid chargers provided by Nichicon and eNovates.

Opportunity

EV-elocity is a Innovate funding research project currently exploring new vehicle to grid and energy management technologies. It has the aim to incentivize drivers to embrace electric vehicles by offering consumers the ability to earn money when they are not charging or using their vehicle.

The project is encouraging vehicle-to-grid (V2G) innovation technologies, change in user behaviour and developing the business models necessary to share the value that V2G can bring to the grid, local and regional businesses, and the consumer.

Solution

As a sub-contractor for Crowd Charge, Hangar 19 worked closely with vehicle to grid manufacturers eNovates and Nichicon to complete interoperability testing and be able to support two further V2G chargers on the charge point management platform Hubeleon. Hubeleon is the core software product of Hangar 19 and currently supports over 50 different V1G charger models and now five different V2G charger models.

Hangar 19 liaised with the installer partners EV Charging Solutions, The Phoenix Works and Stratford Energy, to identify the best communication solution for the V2G chargers. Hangar 19 commissioned each charger and controller onto the Hubeleon platform. Hangar 19 also developed and manufactured the Crowd Charge controller. The controller is the hardware necessary to allow the Crowd Charge energy management platform to remotely issue charging schedules upon the V2G chargers. No site is deemed as fully commissioned the Crowd Charge controller and user have verified that the charger has been able to successfully charge a vehicle and discharge energy back into the grid.

Park &Recharge as the charge point management service provider arm of Hubeleon also took responsibility for customer support and the provision of RFID cards. The project is currently ongoing, and we will update this case study in the near future with user behaviour findings.