The INteractive CHarging (INCH) project will introduce the next-generation charging station for electric vehicles (EVs), named Etrel Smartcharger. It will enable charging of an increasing number of EVs in a smart and sustainable manner, which is the only way to optimise energy use in transport and reduce related greenhouse gas emissions. In the long term, it will not be possible to use EVs without using solutions such as the Smartcharger. The Smartcharger is a new version of Etrel's current product generation, designed as a low-voltage AC charging station for use at homes, offices, and car parks. It will bring down the cost of smart charging infrastructure deployment where it matters the most (more than 90 % of charging takes place at home or at work). At the same time, it will bring the charging network to a new level, allowing each and every connected car to adjust its consumption to the needs of the energy grid. Market adoption of the Smartcharger will be driven mostly by EV drivers who require an interactive solution that can automatically charge their car in the desired time without overloading the circuit. The Smartcharger will allow each EV user to save 140 EUR per year in charging costs and will return the investment in 3-4 years, roughly a third of its lifetime. Users will be able to share control over their charging with power companies in exchange for financial compensation. This will give the power companies an option to control EV charging load, in order to reduce it in time of peak demand or use the batteries as a reservoir for electricity from renewable sources at times of high production. With an additional investment of 1.322.000 EUR, an estimated 67M EUR of profits and 65 new jobs within the company are expected over the course of 10 years after the end of the project. The INCH project will also present an enabling technology for the integration of EV charging into European smart grids and for the provision of new services in electromobility.

The INteractive Charging (INCH) project aims to commercialise a price-performance optimised smart AC charging station for plug-in electric vehicles (PEVs). It will be designed primarily for home use and use in semi-private areas where several PEVs are charging at the same time. The device will support smart charging of PEVs by offering advanced features not yet available on the market: remote interactive charging power management, real-time communication with external actors, advanced power management, different connectivity options, clustering of charging stations in the same area, precise metering of energy consumption within the charging station and support for latest charging protocols. The INCH project will present an enabling technology for the integration of PEV charging into the European smart grids and for the provision of new services in electromobility. There are two main categories of users that will benefit from INCH: end users who use the PEV charging station and other electromobility actors (service providers, PEV supply equipment operators, DSOs, energy providers, VPP operators) who can offer new services to these end users. End users will benefit from easily charging a PEV on the existing installation without worrying about potential outages, thanks to built-in flexible power management. Other electromobility stakeholders will be able to offer new added value services based on controllability and new data coming from smart charging stations. The proposed feasibility assessment will produce a study which will assess the technical and commercial feasibility of INCH by identifying relevant use cases, analysing user needs, defining the corresponding new functionalities, and researching the HW and SW required for the support of these new functionalities. Economical feasibility of the project will be assessed within the initial business plan, which will include evaluation of project costs and a detailed time-plan for the potential Phase II.

The GOFLEX project will innovate, integrate, further develop and demonstrate a group of electricity smart-grid technologies, enabling the cost-effective use of demand response in distribution grids, increasing the grids’ available adaptation capacity and safely supporting an increasing share of renewable electricity generation. The GOFLEX smart grid solution will deliver flexibility that is both general (across different loads and devices) and operational (solving specific local grid problems). GOFLEX enables active use of distributed sources of load flexibility to provide services for grid operators, balance electricity demand and supply, and optimize energy consumption and production at the local level of electricity trading and distribution systems. Building on top of existing, validated technologies for capturing and exploiting distributed energy consumption and production flexibility, GOFLEX enables flexibility in automatic trading of general, localized, device-specific energy as well as flexibility in trading aggregated prosumer energy. Generalized demand-response services are based on transparent aggregation of distributed, heterogeneous resources to offer virtual-power-plant and virtual-storage capabilities. The sources of load flexibility include thermal (heating/cooling) and electric storage (electric vehicles charging/discharging). A backbone data-services platform offers localised estimation and short-term predictions of market and energy demand/generation, and flexibility in order to support effective data-driven decisions for the various stakeholders. Smart-grid technologies, such as increased observability and congestion management, contribute to the platform. Over 36 months, GOFLEX will demonstrate the benefits of the integrated GOFLEX solution in three use-cases, covering a diverse range of structural and operational distribution grid conditions in three European countries.