As with every other year, the Innovation category for 2017 was one of the most hotly contested awards, with entries coming from a wide variety of manufacturers and suppliers.
However, after much deliberation and debate, the standout winner of the award is EO’s eoHUB, which has been designed specifically for fleet customers. eoHUB is a mini-computer that can connect 30 ‘smart-ready’ EO charging stations to the Internet.
Once online, the chargers are managed from the eoCloud web-portal? and as an EV driver, you can simply download the eoApp to start and stop charging.
Today, a business might only have one employee that drives electric. Therefore, a simple and cost-effective charging station is all that’s required, says the company. As the number of EV drivers increases, the company will need to provide more chargers.
Once the number of EVs reaches approximately 5-10, the company will typically hit two problems – 1) the cost of charging 5-10 EV’s per day is becoming noticeable and the boss wants more info, and 2) the building starts to hit issues around available power supply.
At this point EO retrofit their eoHUB, which connects the chargers to the internet and enables the boss to monitor energy usage, calculate BIK, restrict access and bill for charging. It also is able to control the charging station’s power output. The eoHUB turns chargers up and down based on what power is available at the site. This technology will often enable an installer to fit fast chargers and avoid upgrading a site’s power supply.
Lastly, because there is just one ‘intelligence module’ and up to 30 ‘dumb’ chargers, the cost of deploying the EO solution at scale is significantly less than competing solutions ?a customer will typically save £300/charger. Plus, because there is only one point of internet connectivity, customers do not get hit with on-going data fees per charger.
