Expected Outcome:

Project results are expected to contribute to all the following outcomes:

• Development and demonstration of innovative, interoperable, efficient, low-power smart and bi-directional on-street charging, removing barriers to EV user acceptability in densely populated areas. User acceptability should be quantifiably improved from technological, investment costs and costs of charging point of view.
• The proposed innovative solutions should be conductive to optimise efficiency and reduce costs, but ideally should not be visually and physically intrusive, or these aspects should be kept to a minimum level, given the high level of expected deployment that would create problems for pedestrians and other road users.
• Development of an analytical methodology including representative models (replicable at an EU-wide scale) to ensure an efficient planning for the mass deployment and integration of public (and where applicable private) EV charging infrastructure^[1], satisfying concrete user needs (in particular for night charging of L, M1 and N1 vehicles and their opportunistic day charging) and making it compatible as much as possible with existing low voltage grid and power system capabilities.
• Quantifiable improvement of related business models and gaps for users compared to current State of the Art, additionally also including considerations for less densely populated areas.
• Development of socio-cultural databases at city, regional and national level comprising daily charging habits, practices, and ideas of different community clusters (including individuals with special needs) and their integration into charging and planning tools, to support the determination of the most efficient and most accepted charging solutions. These developments should interact with the work of Sustainable Transport Forum^[2].
• The identification and analysis of potential regulatory aspects and barriers for relevant standardisation activities via common, interoperable and open standards, protocols and digital services.
• Deployment of multilevel systemic architecture and solutions for smart and bi-directional charging power management that will increase RES penetration as well as enhance the grid capacities and power system resilience by alleviating grid congestions and levelling off the load curve.

Scope:

Future charging infrastructure deployment should be ubiquitous, and should parallel, with a certain level of anticipation the growth of EV sales. Associated charging solutions should enable seamless processes that are easy, fully interoperable across European country borders and available at any time. The aim of this topic is to enable and improve massive smart on-street low-cost charging of EVs as well as improving the overall efficiency of power supply to the grid, including a space-and-time-oriented prediction and control of the global charging power demand, also enabling and improving smart home and office charging that could be explored by proposals to complement the on-street charging solutions.

Proposals are expected to address all the following aspects:

• Guarantee an exhaustive coverage of high-efficiency, low-power, low-cost on-street smart charging points considering grid infrastructure and capacity, optimisation of civil works and grid requirements for services and charging needs, including the parking patterns (charging on long- and short-term parking spaces) to reduce the need for additional buffers to stabilise the grid.
• Address users’ needs and requirements in socio-cultural contexts of different communities to incorporate daily habits, practices and ideas into the design and development of people-friendly infrastructure with emphasis on public charging (also considering smart use, while connected, of energy consuming convenience functions like cabin and battery pre-heating and cooling).
• Use statistical models of parking, traffic and grid configuration and energy flows to predict and support power supply planning on a larger scale (e.g. at least regional), along with methodologies and demonstrations to derive or calibrate such models on the basis of real traffic and behavioural data.
• People centric applications equipped with the analytical capability and Human Machine Interfaces (HMI) for friendly access and use, that support the interactions related to the ratio between location, power (and its guaranteed minimum) and price for prompt decision making or pre-allocation of charging stations in line with users’ charging preferences and vehicle state of charge, also allowing charging point operators to predict power demand.
• Support and demonstration of smart and bi-directional operation in overnight publicly accessible environments to accommodate demand for long-term charging, and meeting some of the requirements of opportunistic charging types, motivating the people to optimally charge (maximising the use of renewable power) and promoting the development and use of interfaces with customized vehicle charging technology which can be preconditioned and set-up by the driver, including the pre-allocation of charging points.
• Development of innovative optimisation functions exploiting real-time access to battery information such as state of health, state of charge, capacity and power set point, which should be provided respecting any GDPR and data disclosure terms to the owners, users or other stakeholders in the value chain, such as building energy system managers, mobility and logistics service providers and electricity stakeholders.
• The developed solutions are expected to be provided on non-discriminatory terms between users and classes of users and allow the choice of the e-mobility service providers, so as to avoid consumers lock-in with a single e-mobility service provider, affiliated to specific vehicle manufacturers.
• Optimise the use of energy resources and infrastructures to cater not just for private mobility usage but also integrating opportunity use of the same infrastructure by other light duty captive fleets if their needs are compatible with the low power level.

This topic requires the effective contribution of Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH) disciplines and the involvement of SSH experts, institutions as well as the inclusion of relevant SSH expertise, in order to produce meaningful and significant effects enhancing the societal impact of the related research activities. Furthermore, in order to achieve the expected outcomes, social innovation should be considered.

The selected projects are invited to participate to BRIDGE^[3] activities when considered relevant.

This topic implements the co-programmed European Partnership on ‘Towards zero emission road transport’ (2ZERO). As such, projects resulting from this topic will be expected to report on the results to the European Partnership ‘Towards zero emission road transport’ (2ZERO) in support of the monitoring of its KPIs.

Specific Topic Conditions:

Activities are expected to achieve TRL7-8 by the end of the project – see General Annex B.

[1] Considering, where appropriate, deployment targets under the Alternative Fuels Infrastructure Regulation (AFIR) and Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD) proposals

[2] https://transport.ec.europa.eu/transport-themes/clean-transport-urban-transport/sustainable-transport-forum-stf_en

[3] https://www.h2020-bridge.eu/