Irina Nikulina, (representative of the EKF brand in Russia) answers questions from the iXBT.pro analytical department.
What key factors influenced your company's decision to launch EKF Impulse?
One of the key factors is the multiple increase in sales of electric vehicles in Russia, the general global trend towards electric vehicles, impressive global growth rates in electric vehicle sales - the European market added 1%, the USA - 10%, China grew by 30%, and the global result was +20%. In 2021, Russia approved the Concept for the development of production and use of electric vehicles, according to which by 2030 the country should have more than 72,000 EV charging stations (of which at least 28,000 are fast) and 1.4 million electric vehicles (about 3% of the total number of vehicles). Official sales of our EV charging stations started in February, and now the stations are installed in residential complexes in Moscow, Tver, and Izhevsk.
How does EKF Impulse differ from other solutions available on the charging infrastructure market?
EKF Impulse is a comprehensive approach to the design, deployment, and operation of charging infrastructure, which combines hardware, software, and service maintenance. The owner of the charging infrastructure does not need to combine several solutions offered by different companies into one. We offer both a charging station, a monetization service, and a power distribution solution on a one-stop-shop basis.
What categories of consumers is this product designed for?
Our charging infrastructure solution is designed for both electric car owners and businesses. Charging stations can be installed both for your own electric vehicle in the garage and to organize commercial charging stations in underground parking lots, covered parking lots, and outdoors.
What are the main advantages of Impulse charging stations?
From our point of view, these are four main advantages. Free consultation for all customers during design. We help to select and correctly incorporate the necessary charging infrastructure into the project. We are also ready to help install and connect the components of the charging infrastructure, configure and carry out commissioning works. In this case, we start from the client's request. Our third advantage is dynamic power distribution - it solves the problem of shortage during peak loads, distributes free power between the object and the charging cluster, as well as within the charging cluster. Thanks to dynamic power balancing, the cost of technological connection to electrical networks is reduced overall. This is an important point for the business community. And, of course, a web interface for monitoring the status of the charging infrastructure with data collection and analytics functions, as well as the ability to set tariffs for managing and monetizing the charging infrastructure.
What is special about the dynamic power balancing cabinet? How does it help optimize energy consumption?
The dynamic power balancing cabinet is a ready-to-install boxed solution for efficient use of the power available at the facility in real time. To work, you need to connect to the EKF brand's cloud solution, which calculates and distributes the power available for the charging infrastructure online. We have allocated the dynamic balancing cabinet as a separate item, which can be included in the project and installed on its own.
What software is used to manage the charging infrastructure?
We offer charging infrastructure owners free connection of charging stations to the EKF Charge service. In their personal account, charging infrastructure owners can monitor its status in real time, analyze statistics, and set tariffs. At the same time, electric car owners are offered functions for booking charging stations, "parking" their electric vehicles in the "garage", and paying for charging sessions. At the same time, the home version of EKF Charge is free for private users. All software solutions are implemented on a Russian cloud service, which guarantees reliable data protection and stable operation of services.
What technologies ensure the safety of charging stations?
Charging stations are equipped with twelve types of protection, including protection against voltage drops by phases, protection against high and low voltage and current values, short circuits, and others.
How does EKF Impulse cope with peak loads in power grids?
The boxed power balancing solution will help solve the problem of peak loads by redistributing power between the object and the charging cluster. When consumption at the facility, for example, in the house is at its peak, the power available at the moment is distributed to the charging cluster. As soon as the consumption of the house decreases, the released energy is redistributed to the charging cluster. This solution is fully developed within the company, and the cabinet itself is assembled entirely from EKF components.
How protected are users using charging stations?
In addition to the above-mentioned degrees of protection, each charger has an emergency stop button for emergency cases. Therefore, the user can feel absolutely protected.
How does the process of installing and launching the charging infrastructure go?
It depends on the customer and the number of charging stations. If it is several charging stations at an office or in a business center, then, as a rule, the customer independently deals with the installation and commissioning. If it is a developer who may have 10 charging stations in one residential complex, combined with power balancing, then the process is quite simple and familiar to developers with the solution being included in the project and its further implementation. Through our partners, we can take over the installation and commissioning. However, we developed the solution, including power balancing, in such a way that this process becomes as seamless as possible and can be performed by any qualified contractor.
Is it possible to modernize or expand the network of charging stations in the future?
We built our charging infrastructure solution using the principle of openness, so charging stations equipped with the OCPP protocol from any manufacturer, not only the EKF brand, can be connected to EKF Charge or the balancing solution. Just as Impulse can become part of any other system that supports this protocol. In addition, our balancing solution has no restrictions on the number of connected charging stations in terms of the algorithm and is easily scalable. In this regard, network expansion can occur as conveniently and quickly as possible.
What are the forecasts for the development of charging infrastructure in Russia?
We see that interest in charging infrastructure is growing, and more and more developers and other companies in all regions are joining the trend of developing charging infrastructure. In addition to the market - the increasing number of electric vehicles on the road - an important incentive is the state: according to the concept for the development of production and use of electric vehicles in Russia, at least 72 thousand charging stations should be put into operation by 2030.
Are there plans to release new models or additional solutions within EKF Impulse?
Of course, we plan to develop EKF Impulse, add new models of slow charging stations, for example, with two connectors for charging two electric vehicles at the same time, with a socket instead of an attached cable. But we are not going to limit ourselves to slow charging, we are already working on a series of fast charging stations and plan to introduce useful accessories into the range.
What further steps does the company plan to expand its presence in the charging infrastructure segment?
We plan to test various business models, as we understand that the market in our country is only forming right now practically before our eyes. We are already represented in several roles: a manufacturer of charging stations and an electric vehicle charging service. We decided to combine both of these roles, as we want to provide our customers with a comprehensive offer without having to look for partners for the missing part of the business model.