Innovative and smart charging of electric vehicles

Customer

Power Fuel is a Danish and nationwide provider of electric charging stations for housing associations, companies, and private individuals. Power Fuel originates from the electrical installation company Axeltoft ApS, and was founded in 2020 by Jacob Axeltoft Lukassen and Phillip Borg Rønnov. Power Fuel focuses on making it easy to run on electricity by offering intelligent and user-friendly charging options for different customer groups. A green mindset guides the company in everything they do. For example, the company exchanges every sold charging station for 1 square meter of protected nature and has found in Schneider Electric, a partner for the supply of modern charging stations, who was awarded the title of “The World’s Most Sustainable Company” in 2021.

Power Fuel is headquartered in Skovlunde, Greater Copenhagen. The company's primary occupation is housing associations and companies all over Denmark that want a complete solution with intelligent charging stations and their administration. In addition, Power Fuel also offers solutions for municipalities, whether it should be internal staff or whether it should be publicly available to the municipality's citizens.

Challenge

Power Fuel contacted us in their search for a digital supplier with experience in IoT, for the development and design of an app that could offer intelligent and user-friendly control of electric charging station solutions for both private individuals, housing associations and companies.  With a long wish list of features to implement over time, working with usability has continuously been a high priority, as so many feature additions can quickly make the app's user interface unmanageable.  The design had to be tailored based on the brand book, and there was a desire for dynamic animations at load time for instance. The requirements for the back-end were also complex from version 1, including features such as managing charging stations; company and association profiles; user verification; complex payment and invoicing options etc. Regarding integration with the actual EV-chargers, Power Fuels partner Schneider Electric had developed a cloud solution that we could integrate towards for integration via the Open Charge Point Protocol (OCPP) a global open standard for interoperability in the industry, which is becoming a standardized requirement for providers from public clients. An IoT solution was thus planned, i.e., an interconnected network of physical objects that integrate hardware and software for the simple purpose of connecting and exchanging data between devices and systems.

Solution

The design of the app was created through ongoing dialogue with imangu and Power Fuel.  The process began with a longer planning phase, where we analyzed the cloud platform as well as the OCPP protocol, designed and prepared the solution specifications for a version 1, and prepared a roadmap for the following feature additions. After the launch of version 1, we have worked according to AGILE principles, with both operation support and ongoing feature additions. From the start, we emphasized a professional look that was in line with Power Fuel's brand and their identity.  The app is developed as a native app for both iOS and Android in a bespoke design based on the brand book and includes animations and green colors in line with the company's vision.

Back-end and app server were developed in the framework Laravel, which is an open-source PHP framework for development that provides great flexibility and security.  It is integrated via REST APIs for payment gateway from Danish Reepay, through which ongoing payments are handled with credit cards and mobilepay, as well as Mailgun for automatic sending of emails by user verification, invoicing etc., and in addition also to Google Maps, for live map data and geolocation.

Result

The Power fuel app loads with an animation which shows a charging battery. The colors are in shades of green in a minimalist style. The front page has been continuously praised by users, for providing a simple and intuitive overview of the functions, as well as the opportunity to start charging at the first touch. In addition, you can access locations via map or list, book a stand in advance, check your consumption, get information about live electricity prices or go to the "help" section.  Navigation works with breadcrumbs, so you can always find your way back to the front page, as well as a burger / side menu on the left side from where you can handle user profile (including GDPR requirements such as delete user), payment information, etc.  It is possible to pay either as a private user with your own credit card or mobile pay, or to be associated with both company and / or housing association account. Thus, approved employees can charge for free, and you can possibly pay your charges at home in the housing association over the normal invoice for housing expenses. The system has an extensive back-end administration from which charging stations are created and handled, possibly with company logos as is the case for stands in Aldi's parking lots; content and user administration; in accordance with GDPR; payments; push notifications, etc. The collaboration has been going on for 2+ years, and the system is in constant development, and most recently it was also possible for Power Fuel users to charge at IONIOTY's charging stations throughout Europe after a comprehensive integration was implemented. We look forward to a continued long and successful cooperation!