Needs

AWS Cloud services for electric mobility: the case of Enel X Way

Enel X Way is a new global company of the Enel Group dedicated to electric mobility that operates in 16 countries, from Europe to America, from Asia to Oceania, managing over 430,000 public and private charging points through numerous collaborations and partnerships. Enel X Way is a company with very strong roots in the energy sector and pursues an open strategy aimed at digitalization, sustainability and innovation.

In compliance with Enel X Way’s strategic business development plan, Exprivia has created the core of the new Charging Station Management System (CSMS), i.e. the software components necessary for managing and monitoring the life cycle of electric recharging.

AWS Cloud: the Exprivia Charging Station Management System

The initial phase was focused on the main European regions of interest (Italy, Spain and Romania), subsequently Exprivia led the scale-up phase of the solution and the multi-regional rollout (USA).

The electric mobility platform created allows users who wish to use the charging service to access the service both through the mobile application and through the RFID provided, giving them the opportunity to access both public and private charging stations. Consumption data is sent to the centralized system.

A platform for monitoring electric charging stations

The platform allows efficient monitoring of consumption and charging times of electric cars and at the same time provides hourly reports relating to the services provided. The Charging Station Management System manages the charging stations of other CPOs (Charge Point Operators) and allows the sale of charging services to be delegated to third-party companies (it provides for interoperability with external systems).

The implemented solution adheres to the OCPP (Open Charge Point Protocol) protocol for integration and communication with Charging Stations. The CSMS provides tools for the administration and monitoring of electric charging stations for cars distributed throughout the territory and integration mechanisms with the Partner ecosystem through APIs and interoperability solutions.

Communication and interoperability with external partners can take place through the following protocols:

• PCIP (Specification of Publicly Charged Interoperability Services)
• OICP (Open Intercharge Protocol)
• OCPI (Open Charging Point Interface)

Exprivia Solution

AWS cloud-native development for the migration of Enel X Way charging stations

The solution exploits the potential of AWS services in the cloud and is based on an architecture of microservices distributed on Docker containers orchestrated through Kubernetes. The microservices architectural model provides added value for the customer in terms of resiliency and scalability of the solution.

Exprivia supported the customer in the strategic definition of the migration process of charging stations and partners in the various countries and with the various interoperability protocols used. We also built the automated tools needed to start the migration process and implemented the different tenant configurations to ensure data segregation.

After the go-live of the new CSMS, Exprivia continued to support the customer in the development of new features on the system that translate into new process capabilities that allow Enel X Way to continue to innovate and maintain its market leadership in e-mobility.

Results

The digital transformation solution for electric mobility, in which Exprivia acted as a leader and strategic partner of Enel X Way, has led to the creation of a digital infrastructure based on:

• Operational continuity at the highest level, guaranteed through containers;
• Early release in operation of the core modules, thanks to the use of agile and devops methodologies;
• Standard interaction with charging stations via IOT platform;
• Handling large volumes of data in real time with high performance.

Benefits

Through the implementation of Enel X Way’s new Charging Station Management System, the following benefits have been achieved:

• MultiCloud architecture: Cloud architecture independent of the cloud provider. All architectural components have been designed and managed with the aim of being independent of the cloud provider. This goal has been pursued by using containers that can be made operational on any cloud infrastructure on the market;
• Resiliency: Localized failures do not affect the entire infrastructure. All processes implemented by the platform were built using microservices. This technological choice ensures that any faults located within a particular microservice do not affect the operation of the entire architecture;
• Scalability: Automatically add resources to handle spikes in uptime. The system is able to autoscale horizontally by automatically recognizing operational peaks on the platform, automatically adding resources and/or new application containers as needed;
• IoT and edge computing: autonomous charging stations for data management even offline. IoT modules and edge agents aim to efficiently manage the volumes of information coming from the various charging stations and allow computations directly on the device and robust offline management, minimizing any disruption in terms of charging;
• Multi-tenant: Group assets/features to limit interventions. The solution allows you to create tenant core functions. The term tenant refers to the possibility of identifying a set of core processes and organizing communication with the various devices and modules according to well-defined logics. A typical example of a tenant is the geographical breakdown of charging stations. This limits the occurrence of failures and avoids the risk of system failure. In addition, the data transmission load is distributed among the various application units;
• Convergence: Facilitating the merging of third-party platforms into the CSMS. The solution allows third-party platforms to easily converge into the CSMS through the creation of dedicated core services to be managed in multi-tenancy.