An integrated cloud-native solution able to manage the entire electric charging process and interoperability with third parties

Enel X Way is a new global reality of the Enel group dedicated to electric mobility which 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 solid roots in the energy sector and pursues an open strategy aimed at digitalization, sustainability and innovation.

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

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

The created electric mobility platform allows users who want to use the recharging service to access the service either via the mobile application or via the supplied RFID, giving them the possibility of accessing both public and private recharging stations. Consumption data are sent to the centralized system. The platform allows efficient monitoring of consumption and recharging times for electric cars and at the same time provides reports relating to the services provided. The CSMS 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 interoperability with external systems). The solution implemented adheres to the OCPP protocol (Open Charge Point Protocol) for integration and communication with the Charging Stations. The CSMS provides tools for the administration and monitoring of charging stations 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 (Public Charging Interoperability Services Specification)
• OICP (Open Intercharge Protocol)
• OCPI (Open Charge Point Interface)

The solution exploits the potential of the AWS cloud services and is based on a microservices architecture deployed on Docker containers orchestrated through Kubernetes. The microservices architectural model guarantees added value for the customer in terms of resilience and scalability of the solution.

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

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

Results achieved

The digital transformation, in which Exprivia acted as the leader and strategic partner of Enel X Way, resulted in the creation of a digital infrastructure based on:

• Business continuity at very high level, guaranteed using containers;
• Early production release of the core modules, guaranteed using agile and devops methodologies;
• Standard interaction with charging stations via the IOT platform;
• Management of large volumes of data in real time with high performance.

Benefits

Through the implementation of the new CSMS the following benefits have been achieved:

• MultiCloud Architecture: cloud vendor independent architecture. All the architectural components have been designed and managed with the aim of being independent from the cloud vendor. This objective was pursued using containers that can be made operational on any cloud infrastructure on the market.
• Resilience: localized faults do not affect the entire infrastructure. All the processes implemented by the platform have been created using microservices. This technological choice ensures that any faults located within a particular micro-service do not affect the functioning of the entire architecture.
• Scalability: automatic addition of resources to handle peaks in uptime. The system is able to operate horizontal auto-scaling 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. The IoT modules and edge agents aim to efficiently manage the volumes of information originating from the various charging stations and allow computations directly on the device and robust offline management, minimizing any disruptions in terms of recharging.
• Multi-tenant: group assets/functionalities to limit interventions. The solution allows you to create core functions of tenants. The term tenant means 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 subdivision of the charging stations. In this way the occurrence of any faults is circumscribed, and the risk of system failure is avoided; moreover, the data transmission load is distributed among the various application units.
• Convergence: facilitate the merger of third-party platforms in the CSMS. The solution allows third-party platforms to converge easily in the CSMS through the creation of dedicated core services to be managed through multi-tenancy.