[NEWS] Merging EU charging infrastructure data (p1)

Slovenian Ministry of Infrastructure involved in the EU project IDACS - ID and data collection for sustainable fuels in Europe

Since January 2019, the Ministry of Infrastructure has been involved in the IDACS project, which establishes unified information platforms for charging infrastructure for alternative fuel vehicles in European partner countries.

In Slovenia, we have three major information platforms for electric vehicle charging infrastructure, which inform users about the location and the technical specifications of electric charging stations.

Information platforms for charging infrastructure for electric vehicles do not have standardization of information. Several years ago, information platforms provided more information about charging infrastructure than they do now. On certain information platforms, the user was able to find, in addition to basic information, information about ownership, operator, year of installation, hosting on foreign platforms and the like. Now such platforms have reduced the amount of information to basic information.

In preparing the analysis related to number, location, operation and technical specifications, it is still necessary to check several websites and contact the operators of electric charging stations to obtain the relevant data. In addition, one of the major platforms is only accessible through pre-registration. Not all existing public and semi-public electric vehicle charging stations are available on information platforms. No one currently knows exactly how many public and semi-public charging stations are in Slovenia, their technical specifications and they are operational. SURS, Statistical Office of the Republic of Slovenia keeps statistics of the charging infrastructure for electric vehicles and even they cannot say with certainty that the data are complete. Even worse is the situation with the charging infrastructure for charging electric bikes.

In recent years, Gorenjske Elektrarne, Elektro Ljubljana, the Gorenjska Regional Development Agency, together with certain municipalities, have highlighted a problem of the lack of uniform management of data on public and semi-public charging infrastructure for electric vehicles for analyzing, planning, infrastructure investments and informing users. In addition, they supported the idea of a common information platform at national level that would address the issue of unequal access to standardized data for the general public as well as for the purpose of research, analysis, monitoring of the spread and investment planning. Some European countries, along with our Ministry of Infrastructure, have recognized the same need.

In order to improve the current situation in this field, the Ministry of Infrastructure joined the project consortium of European IDACS partners. Partnership countries that will establish, at national levels, a uniform methodological approach identifying and monitoring the existing and emerging charging infrastructure for electric vehicles and vehicles to other alternative fuel sources within three years, are the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany, Poland, Austria, Croatia, United Kingdom, Spain, Lithuania, Czech Republic, Hungary, Portugal, France, Greece and Slovenia.

IDACS, a project co-financed with European funding, addresses the establishment of unique ID codes for the management of charging infrastructure for electric vehicles, the definition of the ID code format, the establishment of a national registry for ID codes, the establishment of a national repository of identification ID codes and links to the European repository ID code. The goal of IDACS is to harmonize ID code format solutions for electro mobility providers and charging station operators. 

Some countries already have a system of code generation in place. Examples can be found in the Netherlands, France, Germany and Austria. 

(read part 2 here for the key results)