Barcelona: A case for Smart Energy Management

In 2020, in collaboration with Barcelona’s City Council Commissioner for the 2030 Agenda, Digital Future Society launched the Tech & Climate Open Innovation Challenge. This initiative aimed to identify innovative solutions to reduce the environmental footprint of the technology sector in the context of climate emergencies.

After winning this innovation contest, Awesense was chosen to help Endolla Barcelona – the city’s charging points network – to continue making progress in optimizing its electricity consumption.

Owned by Barcelona de Serveis Municipals (B: SM), Endolla Barcelona is the most extensive public network of charging points in Spain, with more than 650 points located throughout the city (6 points/km2), and is among the most extensive in Southern Europe.

Awesense helped to develop a smart energy management system. The Awesense team, using the Awesense Energy Transition Platform, provided insight into the energy demand and energy consumption at Endolla charging points to reduce their environmental impact towards the goal of zero emissions. The pilot test was launched during the first quarter of 2022 using data collected from the last two years.

The Awesense team integrated meter and EV charging session data from the 500 charging points. Following the ingestion, using notebooks analysis on top of the Awesense Energy Data Model (EDM), the team could glean insights into the EV charging capacity of the area. The analytics provided the ability to visualize the power draw for any EV charger, with temporal drill-down down to minute granularity giving the B: SM team information on the EV charger utilization and EV contribution to the total load, especially during peak hours. From these insights, the B: SM can choose where and how many new EV chargers can be added to the network.

We’re delighted to offer the city of Barcelona an additional vision of its electric vehicle charging infrastructure. This is a great example of the power of data to enable a more accurate vision of analyses. We hope this project benefits the people of Barcelona and improves their access to the electric vehicle charging infrastructure in the near future.
– Mischa Steiner, CEO at Awesense.

At A Quick Glance:

The Pilot Project: The Digital Future Society (a programme of Mobile World Capital Barcelona and the Spanish Ministry of Economic Affairs and Digital Transformation) & The Barcelona de Serveis Municipals (B: SM)
The Goal: Develop a smart energy management system for EV Charger awareness and planning
The Data:
- Data integration of over 500 BSM charging points distributed throughout numerous stations and car parks.
- Meter data and EV charger session data of two years integrated
The Analytics
- Notebook analyses and visualizations on top of the Awesense Energy Data Model (EDM) using Jupyter, SQL & Python
The Questions Answered
- EV charger utilization
  - Out of all EV chargers installed in a given parkade, what is the maximum number that was ever in use simultaneously?
  - How often was a particular number of EV chargers in simultaneous use?
- EV contribution to the total load, especially during peak hours
  - What percentage of a parkade’s full load was due to EV charging?
- Location and capacity of new EV Charging infrastructure
  - Which parkades can allow all the already-installed EV chargers to be used simultaneously at maximum power draw?
  - Which parkades can support additional EV chargers?
  - Which parkades need their load capacity increased?

This collaboration is a further example of the leadership that Endolla Barcelona aims to exercise in the city. B:SM is working to support city residents in the transition to electric vehicles through its development of a charging network located in every neighbourhood. But it is also helping to develop the sector and find solutions to future challenges such as smart energy management. Alliances like the one with Awesense, based on knowledge exchange, innovation and added value, are strategic
– Marta Labata, CEO at B: SM.

The insights from the data ingestion and analytics performed by Awesense provided invaluable information into the optimization of the EV Infrastructure deployment and the management of these for Barcelona, reiterating the power of data & data analytics in the development of intelligent energy management systems.

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