Cabo Verde public charging service concessionaire chooses EVcharge to manage 110 electric vehicle chargers
This summer 2023 EVcharge has joined as a project partner of Trações Elétricas de Cabo Verde (TECV), a company of the APP-IMPULSO group, dedicated to the installation, management, commercialisation of energy and concessionaire of the public electric vehicle charging service of the Republic of Cabo Verde, through the State’s ProMEC programme.
With the aim of bringing us closer to a more sustainable future, EVcharge has developed the platform and application services for the management of the infrastructure of 110 electric vehicle chargers in Cabo Verde. This step represents an important advance towards the electrification of transport in the country, supporting the reduction of carbon emissions and promoting a cleaner and more sustainable mobility.
What is the Cabo Verde public recharging network like? Which technology companies are involved?
EVcharge has played a crucial role in this project, developing a specific brand for the Cabo Verde concessionaire and creating 110 customised software licenses for their charger infrastructure. The software will provide efficient management of the charging infrastructure, guaranteeing optimal service for electric vehicle users.
To this end, the EVcharge software platform has been integrated with the SIPS payment gateway of the African country’s banking system to ensure smooth operation and compliance with the country’s rules and regulations.
About the charging equipment, it is important to note that, of the 110 total chargers, 69 chargers (62%) have been supplied by Etecnic, the company that created the EVcharge software, of which 10 are fast chargers and 59 are semi-fast chargers. The remaining 41 come from other manufacturers, some of them also from Catalonia, such as the company Circontrol.
Of this total of 110 chargers, 40 are publicly owned and 70 are owned by TECV.
To find out the point of view of Trações Elétricas de Cabo Verde, we spoke to the President of the Board of Directors of TECV and CEO of the APP-IMPULSO group, Norberto Larriba Blay:
– How do you perceive electric mobility and its future?
Electric mobility has two distinct components, although it may seem obvious, the first is related to mobility, which in the end boils down to how do people move, or how do we move the things and goods that we all use and consume? Here we must think about recharging infrastructures and the typology of vehicles, private, collective, long range, last mile and whatever else we can think of.
The second component concerns the motor fuel on the basis of what energy we use, which ends up being electrical energy as opposed to fossil fuels, which have served us for the most part for the last 100 years.
For the future, electric power is a major driver of decarbonisation. To decarbonise, we must directly electrify as many consumers as possible, but we must also generate as much decarbonised electricity as possible.
In this sense, renewables and storage have a fundamental role to play. The doubt and controversy lies in the role played by decarbonised but non-renewable energies.
Therefore, the future of electric mobility can only go further as a driver of decarbonisation, together with increased penetration of renewables and expanded and improved management of distribution networks in terms of capacity and flows and storage. The question is, at what pace will this happen, and on whom will the responsibility for this development fall?
In small island countries, such as in our case Cabo Verde, electric mobility has the best future in the sense that distances are short and here we must add that the possibility of renewable natural resources is high.
Cabo Verde is a country that has a large solar resource of around 1800 hours a year and also has a large wind resource, with the presence of several operators that inject electricity into the grid.
In this sense, Cabo Verde is no longer thinking about the future of electric mobility, it is already in the present and that is why we have made a decisive commitment. One of the group’s companies, Trações Elétricas de Cabo Verde (TECV), is currently the national concessionaire of the public charging network, with 40 state network points. In addition, we have made a commitment to have our own network, which would be around 70 additional points, given that we clearly see electric mobility as the predominant type of land mobility in the medium term, and for this we have an investment of around 700,000 euros over two years for its implementation, approximately 40% corresponding to the public network and 60% to our private network.
On the contrary, we can say that the group has been involved in the promotion of electric mobility since 2007, at that time participating in various promotional initiatives such as sponsoring a rally of prototypical electric vehicles organised by European associations for the promotion of electric vehicles. In April 2008, I participated as a speaker at the 1st technical conference on electric vehicles organised at the Ateneu Barcelonés with a paper entitled ‘Electric vehicle, a reflective vision’, where Professor Mariano Marzo, Professor of Energy Resources at the University of Barcelona (UB), a reference in the energy sector, also presented a paper.
We have had a fleet of electric vehicles since 2017 and we currently have almost 20 vehicles of 6 different models and brands.
Therefore, from a perspective of more than 15 years of accompaniment and more than 5 years of effective action, in response to your question, we see it from our own firm conviction and as a very appropriate technological solution for many uses of mobility of people and goods that should be gaining users as we are able to increase charging infrastructures, especially fast and ultra-fast ones. The supply of vehicles is also important, but on this point I believe that Asian manufacturers are very determined to provide a wide variety of models, American manufacturers are making progress and I hope that European manufacturers will soon enter the market with more competitive models.
– What are Trações Elétricas de Cabo Verde’s plans for the future?
Trações Elétricas de Cabo Verde (TECV) is a spin off of the APP-IMPULSO group, which we set up this year 2023 after winning the tender for the concession of the public recharging network throughout the country, to which 7 pre-candidates initially applied.
We have to take into account that Cabo Verde is an island state with 9 inhabited islands, with a total population in the archipelago of 500,000 inhabitants and a rotating tourist population of 900,000 tourists per year.
TECV’s objectives are part of the integral management of electric mobility, i.e. from the design of solutions for public and private charging networks, the installation of the infrastructures themselves, the operation, management, maintenance, to fleet services, always closely linked to the availability of a network that integrates a high amount of renewables. In this regard, we already have two facilities with several charging points directly associated with photovoltaic generation facilities.
We say that TECV must provide a comprehensive or 360º electric mobility management service. Our first objective, logically, is to install and have the concessioned public network operational as soon as possible, and in the first half of 2024 to have 40 public charging stations in operation and around 70 more in our private network, in order to end 2024 with the entire archipelago covered. At the same time, we are already training teams for the management and diagnosis of electric vehicles to respond to end users and to ensure that they perceive electric mobility as a mode of transport with the entire service chain resolved and with the greatest contribution of renewable energy possible at all times, so that the user feels personally involved and co-participates in the energy transition.
– Why did you consider joining EVcharge in your project?
We brought EVcharge into the project for two main reasons.
The first was that we quite liked the commercial approach they took. The service and problem-solving orientation of the commercial team, especially Juanma Pérez, was very similar to what we do in our problem-solving activities, i.e. identifying the issue to be solved and articulating a solution focused on effective resolution. For the front and back-office technology platform, we analysed up to 5 commercial solutions from national and international market competitors. Therefore, the first decision factor was the mental harmony between EVcharge’s commercial team and our technical team in the field.
The second key reason for the decision was that we considered that given the complexity of what was being proposed, the creation of an integral platform for the management of the cargo network of an African island country, with a different technological system and language, it would be important to maintain a certain proximity between our development centres and that of Etecnic. APP-IMPULSO is a business group that has a double headquarters, one in Mataró (Barcelona) and one in Sal (Cabo Verde) with the technical teams distributed, approximately 40 engineers in the whole of the Cabo Verde islands and about 20 engineers in the Mataró offices. This point was also a differential fact, in the event of any difficulty arising in the development of the product, as well as in aspects of supply and service, there would be a relational proximity that would increase the resolution capacity of the group, in order to quickly resolve mutual needs. After several months of work, we have seen that this has been the case in aspects relating to the integration of payment systems for the recharging points or logistical shipping difficulties, which, given this foresight, have been resolved quickly and efficiently thanks to the direct contact between the teams of both organisations, and we would like to highlight and thank Ramona Martínez for her personal involvement in the resolution of any aspect that could have been critical but was not.
Building a shared sustainable future
This joint project between EVcharge y Trações Elétricas of Cabo Verde is a clear example of how electric mobility is gaining momentum around the world. With 110 charging points managed by Trações Elétricas de Cabo Verde through the development of EVcharge, Cabo Verde is one step closer to a cleaner and more sustainable future, driving the transition to electric mobility that benefits both the environment and its citizens.
To download the App and be able to recharge your EV in Cabo Verde we recommend: https://tecv.etecnic.net/get_app
