TankE and Alfen create Cologne’s largest public charging plaza

Our partner TankE operates the largest public charging plaza in Cologne, Germany. 74 charging points, consisting of 37 Alfen Eve Double Pro-line DE’s, are available in the parking lots of the MMC Studios Cologne, one of Germany´s largest film and TV studio complexes.

Challenge

Our partner TankE is a full-service German provider of charging infrastructure solutions. They offer their customers advice, planning, implementation, operation, billing and maintenance of charging infrastructure from a single source. 

MMC Studios Köln GmbH, the #1 TV and film studios in Germany selected TankE to help them contribute to the energy station. As one of the largest studio operators in Europe, the topics of sustainability and climate protection are very important to the media group. 

“Electric mobility is the future”, says the Managing Director of MMC Studios Köln GmbH, Ilya Piontek. “And we’re creating optimal conditions here for our employees, tenants and visitors.” 

Solution

The charging plaza is open to the public, but it was mainly installed for employees, tenants and visitors. Due to a user’s typical length of stay of around 3 hours on average, they selected 22kW AC charge points. TankE installed a 37 Eve Double Pro-line [INSERT LINK]dual socket charging stations – 74 sockets all together. The company also took care of planning, commissioning and operations. All of the stations can charge on 3-phase (400V) if the car allows this speed. Combining two sockets into one station saves the customer costs of poles, concrete bases, feeding cables and installation. 

Technical details

To balance the local grid use and to connect the individual charging stations in a charging plaza with each other, Alfen developed its own Smart Charging Network. In such a network, up to 100 charge points can coordinate their charging speed. Although functioning as a group, the charging stations remain individually controllable. With SCN, the available power is divided between the connected EV’s present. 

Read more about the advantages of Alfen’s in-house developed Smart Charging Network technology.

The charging plaza was personalised with the TankE logo in the full color LED display. The charge points are Eichrecht compliant. Alfen’s entire EV Charging portfolio has these customised versions available to meet German laws and regulations for public charging. 

Implementation

TankE completed the installation of the 37 Eve Double Pro-line charging stations in May ‘22. The electrification of parking lots like these contribute to the sustainability goals of many companies. 

In just the first 3 months of operation, over 750 charging processes were completed. On average, the vehicles charged for 4.5 hours with an average of 20 kWh of energy charged. In total, over 15,000 kWh of green electricity was charged in that period of time, saving around 4 tonnes of CO2 compared to diesel/petrol.

“The switch to electromobility presents companies with new challenges when introducing electric fleets or creating charging options.”, says Michael Krystof, Managing Director at TankE GmbH. 

“As TankE, we support our customers in implementing their individual requirements by adding a turnkey charging solution. In doing so, it is particularly important for us to develop a sustainable use case for our customers. With MMC, we successfully helped them to take a decisive step into the future with charging infrastructure and helping them to be a role model in sustainability and climate protection. We created optimal charging conditions for the employees, tenants and visitors of the MMC Studios.”