The public charging infrastructure in the Netherlands will get a solid boost in the coming years. Vattenfall InCharge will be installing as many as 22,000 additional charging points over the next few years in Brabant and Limburg, two provinces in the south of the Netherlands.
In recent years, Vattenfall InCharge has installed a total of more than 37,000 public charging points in Limburg and Brabant. Under the new tender, this number will grow to 59,000 over the next few years. Vattenfall, which also installed the first two series of charging stations, came up with the best offer and won the European tender for the project. The two provinces are putting the charging infrastructure out to tender on behalf of the local councils involved.
Fabian Hagmann, Head of E-mobility at Vattenfall, says: “We are honoured by the trust the Dutch provinces Brabant and Limburg have placed in us. Our proven public infrastructure track record demonstrates our reliability as a leading charging point operator in Europe. With our solution, we can actively stabilise the grid and maximise the use of sustainable electricity. As part of our commitment to electrifying transportation, this new concession will expand our charging network across Sweden, the Netherlands, and Germany, to more than 1 Gigawatt, which equals 90,000 charging points.”
The expansion of the charging infrastructure ties in closely with the energy transition. For the purposes of this tender, both provinces have set high demands for cyber security, price transparency and ease of use, among other factors. For instance, the new charging stations will have a display showing price and charging information. What stands out in particular is that the instalment of the new charging points will be based on predicted use by electric vehicle drivers. This involves looking at where charging demand is highest based on current data.
Vattenfall’s charging stations will support grid-conscious charging, matching charging capacity to available grid capacity, to alleviate grid congestion. Vattenfall can temporarily reduce the power of the charging stations at those spots on the grid where demand for electricity is temporarily too high, for example in evening peak hours when everyone comes home.
For Vattenfall InCharge, this tender marks a third public charging award in one year. It has previously won the tender for the Hague City Council in the Netherlands (5,400 charging points) and the Amsterdam Metropolitan Region (35,000 charging points, in partnership with two other operators).
