GRECO (Electric Vehicle Charging Management)

Acronym of the case:

GRECO

Web address of the case:

https://oficinavirtual.mityc.es/greco

Country of the case:

Spain

City/region:

Spain

Posting Date:

24 August 2012

Last Edited Date:

14 February 2013

Author:

Marina Vega Maza (MINETUR (Ministry of Industry, Energy and Tourism))

electric energy | Environment | Electric vehicle

Type of initiative

Project or service

Case Abstract

GRECO (Electric Vehicle Charging Management) meets two important needs: the essential boost to electric car among the citizens, as a key instrument for contributing to environmental sustainability and, on the other hand, the adoption of the Services Directive into Spanish law, in this case to allow free establishment of charging management companies, which supply the electric energy needed for batteries and are one of the key drivers that will enable electric vehicle to become a reality in Spain.

The main objectives of GRECO are:

Give response to the adoption of Royal Decree (RD) 647/2011, which defines the activity of charging management, that is to say, the offer of energy charging services for electric vehicles. It also put forward the rights and obligations of charging management companies and regulate the procedure and requirements for the development of this activity.
Provide a geographic information system that allows citizens to find the charging stations available in their cities and its surroundings, which form a real "electric vehicle network" available when driving their electric cars. To achieve this, charging management companies must indicate where the charging stations they own are placed and this information is displayed to the citizens through a map published in the Spanish Ministry website.
Offer a solution to the provisions of the Act that transposes the Services Directive (Directive 2006/123/EC). This Directive imposes legal obligations on Member States regarding effective cooperation through electronic means, in order to ensure the supervision of providers and services. Thanks to this, charging management companies will require a simple communication to begin its activity, together with a signed declaration of compliance with the legal, technical and economic requirements. This avoids the need of obtaining the relevant permissions and administrative authorization prior to the start of activity, which makes it possible to shorten the administrative approval process by more than 6 months.

In order to achieve these objectives, the Spanish Ministry of Industry, Energy and Tourism has developed an information system that allows companies to communicate its beginning of activity and the place where their electric stations stand.

Once the information is recorded, the Electric Energy SG, related to Energetic Policy and Mines DG, transmits the communications received to the National Energy Commission, who, on its website, publish and update at least once a month, a list that includes all charging management companies operating in Spain, as long as their facilities.

Finally, information about charging posts and stations location is collected and offered to citizens through the mentioned map (Geographical Information System), that includes useful tools for searching and marking their points of interest.

Description of the case

Domain

eGovernment

Topic

Services for Businesses

Sector

Electricity/Gas | Environment

Start date - End date

June 2011 (Ongoing)

Date operational

July 2011

Target Users

Business (industry) | Business (SME) | Citizen

Target Users Description

GRECO presents two key target users:

Electric Sector Industry and SMEs, above all those related to electric vehicle and its charging, who will benefit from the simplification of the procedure and the elimination of previous barriers for developing its activity in Spain.
Citizens, who will be offered an innovative system that provides updated information about the different stations and systems available for charging its electric vehicle, close to them and geographically located. In future steps, the system will also offer functionalities such as route calculation or a charging simulator based on the battery life of the vehicle, thus making the most of this new means of transport.

Scope

Cross-border | Pan-European

Status

Operation

Language(s)

English | French | German | Italian | Spanish

Policy Context and Legal Framework

Royal Decree-Law 6/2010 of 9 April on measures to boost economic recovery and employment, in its Article 23 modifies Act 54/1997, of 27 November, on the Electricity Sector, in order to include a new subject in the regulatory framework of the sector: the charging management companies, who provide recharging of electricity, needed for a fast and effective development of electric vehicles as an industrial product that combines, at the same time, technologic innovation, capacity of generating a whole new sector with growth potential, and new instruments for energy saving and environmental efficiency.

Royal Decree 647/2011 defines the activity of charging management, that is to say, the offer of energy charging services for electric vehicles. It also specifies the rights and obligations of charging management companies and regulates the procedure and requirements for the development of this activity.

On the other hand, regarding GRECO policy context, we also have to take into account the Directive 2006/123/EC on Services in the Internal Market, that is aimed to achieve the right of establishment and service provision within the European Community, eliminating barriers to the development of service activities between Member States such as language, cross-border limitations, etc.

This Directive includes general provisions facilitating the exercise of the freedom of establishment for service providers and the free movement of services, while maintaining a high quality of them. GRECO information system makes it possible to adopt this measures in charging management sector.

Project Size and Implementation

Type of initiative

Inclusive services of general interest

Overall Implementation approach

Public administration

Technology choice

Proprietary technology | Standards-based technology | Accessibility-compliant (minimum WAI AA)

Funding source

Public funding national

Project size

Implementation: €15-49,000

Yearly cost:

€1-49,000

Implementation and Management Approach

The implementation of GRECO implies the development of the following modules (subsystems):

Information Management Subsystem. Charging management companies apply in the system through a web form, in order to communicate the beginning of its activity. They have to place the charging posts or stations, through its coordinates or directly on an interactive map, and also have to enclose a declaration of responsibility and other required documentation.
This subsystem alsos allow the responsibles in the Ministry to check the information and notify any kind of event related to it. Once the inscription is made, the company is able to modify it, as long as to communicate the suspension of its activity.
Charging Management Comapanies Subsystem. It collects the proper information stored for each company, enabling search, modification and results exploitation by the responsibles of the application.
Third-Parts Communication Subsystem. It sends companies information to the National Energy Commission, as it is established in Royal Decree 647/2011, as long as any subsequent change in data.
Charging Stations Map Subsystem. It consists of a Geographical Information System that collects all the information about the charging posts and stations and shows it on a map, which is published to the public. It also includes different searchs and filters, that help users to find the most interesting stations for them.

Technology solution

The application has been developed in C # and ASP.NET with AJAX framework in order to achieve a significant improvement in usability, under the Visual Studio development environment NET 2010.

The development of the Geographical Information System is based on Google Maps API, given its flexibility and broad range of advantages.

Its deployment has been carried out on an IIS 6.0 Web Server on Windows 2003 Advanced Server.

The persistence of data is accomplished through a Relational Database SQL Server 2005 on Windows 2003 Server.

In order to implement its functions, the system makes use of the following components:

Electronic Registry of the Ministry of Industry, Energy and Tourism, that recods the input and output information for the citizens.
BPM (Business Process Management), in order to manage the flow followed by the whole application. The use of BPM is a clear advantage it provides in relation to the management and maintenance of procedural flow.
ITALO, a tool developed by the Ministry used for sending communications to other agencies, in this case to CNE (National Energy Commission).
Certificate Validation System. To ensure the identity of citizens who communicate with the application.
Module for automatic translation and language management. To facilitate the task of translation and manipulation of language in the application.

Finally, the use of Web Services, as a communication tool with other applications or services, is also a clear advantage and allows clients and servers development to be independent from the platform.

Impact, innovation and results

Impact

The main benefits of GRECO are:

Foster electric vehicle industry as a key sector for environmental efficiency and economic development, thanks to the creation of an innovative instrument for locating charging posts and stations.
Boost and diffusion of electric vehicle benefits among the citizens.
Offer really valuable information, whit a geographical dimension, that can be reused and exploited by other companies and the general public.
Replacement of the complex approval process for initiating charging management activity for a much simplified one.
Freedom of establishment for charging management companies, whenever possible.
Simplification of repeated, superfluous and unnecessary procedures.
Multilinguism, avoiding the language to be an obstacle.
Opening of trading and distribution activities to community enterprises, not only Spanish ones.

Track record of sharing

The adoption of a system like GRECO could be really profitable for other Public Administrations that are facing a similar problem, as long as for any government that is trying to promote electric vehicle in its country or region.

Moreover, GRECO has taken advantage of existing software through reutilization of several components, that allow:

Automatic and simplified management of multilingualism.
Automatic communication with agencies and citizens through business process definition and integration with Electronic Registry.
Multichannel access to consult the status of administrative files on any mobile device (PDA, smartphone ...).

Finally, GRECO itself could be a case of study easy to extrapolate to another agents interested on it. In fact, GRECO responsibles are willing to share its experience and exchange knowledge with potentially interested public or private stakeholders, in order to benefit from new ideas and enrich GRECO system in its following stages.

Lessons learnt

The three main lesson learnt are:

Social Impact of Electric Vehicle - The electric vehicle is a growing sector that needs to be leveraged by initiatives such as GRECO, given that it benefits both industry and citizens but there is still a lack of awareness of the advantages and real opportunitties electric vehicles offer.
Technology Innovations - GRECO has implemented several innovative features:

Use of geographical information technologies based on standards, essential to offer the most valuable information to citizens. In this case, the localization of charge stations through Google Maps API is one of the technological keys of the project, and it makes possible to take full advantage of GRECO functionalities.
The application is built on a platform that allows rapid developments based on the following standards: BPMN and XPDL (business process management), X.509v3 (to ensure the authenticity and identity of users of the application) and SOAP for Web Services.
Use of Multichannel access tool, for accessing administrative procedures and information through different channels (PCs, mobile phones, etc) according to the new era of multichannel delivery.

Services Directive Key Role - The transposition of Services Directive 2006/123/EC has made it possible to simplify the current procedures for an enterprise to establish in any EU Country, and its adoption in electric sector through applications like GRECO has been really profitable.
The main innovation in this case is the replacement of a complex previous authorization procedure for a simple communication, which expedites the process and allows charging management companies to start its activity without any delay.

Multimedia Content Select a Tab

There isn't any SlideShare for this case

There isn't any Video for this case

practice GRECO (Electric Vehicle Charging Management)