Turnkey electric mobility at home and on the road

"I do believe in the horse. The automobile is no more than a transitory phenomenon." Or at least that's what William II of Prussia and Germany thought in 1912. As we read it again today, this statement makes us smile, but it also sounds very topical: innovation, digitalisation and energy transition towards sustainable models are rapidly changing the paradigms of mobility. The present and future of cars and transport are increasingly electric.

Enel's intuition of the potential of electric cars is rooted in our openness to innovation and collaboration with innovative industrial partners and start-ups that are able to look far ahead. Our Group moved its first concrete steps in the world of electric mobility in 2009, in the city of Pisa, Italy. From then on, what seemed like a niche and experimental sector no more than 10 years ago has now become a trend that is changing the face of the entire automotive industry. E-mobility has become a strategic asset of Enel. Enel's commitment to e-mobility is dedicated to electricity as an enabler for mobility in the near future. Its aim is to put electric mobility “on the road,” with turnkey services and offers, tailored to the needs of retail customers and businesses and to develop public charging networks. 

It is a universe to be discovered through the e-smartlife site, to understand how the choice of electric cars today is no longer a niche, but is simple, convenient, increasingly free from limits of travel inside and outside cities and, above all, sustainable. Electric mobility offers numerous benefits: reduction of greenhouse gases and zero noise pollution, greater efficiency, and reuse of components. Electric cars will soon be more affordable too, thanks to lower battery costs and to the increasingly broader range of models offered by car manufacturers. But another step is needed.

The key to allowing electric mobility to tap its full potential is the creation of capillary charging infrastructures. This is also one of the strategic missions in the various countries where we are already present.

In Italy, at our headquarters, we are working on a National Plan that provides for an investment of between 100 and 300 million euros to install 14,000 charging stations by 2022. These charging stations will have to satisfy different needs: fast and high-power recharging that will allow you to charge in 10-20 minutes will be installed along motorways. In urban areas, so-called quick stations with slower charging times are planned to spread and are ideal for offices and car parks, where e-cars will be parked for longer periods of time. The Plan will be complementary to the implementation phase of EVA+, the European project financed by the European Commission and coordinated by Enel in collaboration with the Austrian utility Verbund and the car manufacturers Nissan, Renault, BMW and Volkswagen.

EVA+ provides for the installation of charging stations along the motorway corridors that cross Italy and Austria. According to the project schedule, in September our company installed the first 30 fast charging stations, which today allow us to travel from Rome to Milan by electric car.

 

This project will build the first fast charging network for electric vehicles in Italy, laying the foundation for large-scale electric mobility development plans in Italy and for the connection with charging networks under construction in the rest of Europe.

 

The model proposed by Enel at this stage is a "multi-vendor" open model: this gives all interested energy suppliers the opportunity to sell charging services to customers and the latter to pay for charging in a flexible way, i.e., with an app, a credit card or cash.

The growth of electric mobility is also changing the role of users, transforming them, in some respects, into "distributors.”

As in the case of renewable energies, the spreading of self-generation systems has changed the market configuration, creating "prosumers", i.e., consumers and producers of electricity: the excess energy produced and not consumed is fed into the dispatching network for a fee deducted from the bill.

Similarly, electric cars, which spend much of their time parked, can be used as "batteries on wheels.” So why not use them to balance and stabilise the distribution network, giving back the energy stored in the battery when the car is parked to the grid?

To take advantage of this opportunity, Enel has developed the Vehicle to Grid (V2G) technology, in partnership with an American startup and a global automotive player like Nissan: it is a two-way charging system, which in addition to charging an e-car, can transfer the battery energy to the grid, with the possibility of providing a remuneration mechanism for car owners when they are connected to the grid and give back energy.

We have quickly moved from the idea to experimentation in Spain, Denmark, Germany and the UK and in 2016 we launched the first V2G commercial hub in Copenhagen.

In Italy, the first V2G system was installed at the Italian Institute of Technology, waiting to receive the green light for the experimentation of this technology in Italy.

Encouraging electric mobility is a business strategy for Enel to make a concrete contribution to achieving one of the 17 UN 2030 Agenda Sustainable Development Goals, which deals with combating climate change and implementing the Paris Agreement (SDG #13).

 

Fossil fuels used in transport currently account for 23% of global CO2 emissions (Source IEA). These percentages are even higher if we analyse highly urbanised and industrialised countries and areas: in the EU-27, the rate of transport pollution rate accounts for more than 30%, reaching more than 34% in the United States.