One hub, fully understood
A year after the first idea, the hub is part of the junction: eight fast-charging bays, six AC points for staff, a transformer station at the edge.
Drivers plug in, walk into the shops and come back to a charged car.
The questionCan you explain how this hub came to be, and what keeps it running?
The year in eight moments
A walk across a retail park: traffic, a reason to stay, a willing .
Stop 01250 kVA available, 1.2 MW needed: a connection with its own transformer.
Stop 02Lease, connection, supply, permit, partners: five counterparts, started in parallel.
Stop 03Bays, cable reach, a drive-through lane and accessible chargers on the drawing.
Stop 04Fast chargers for travellers, AC points for staff on the existing connection.
Stop 05Energised at 8 AM, available at 5 PM: tests, backend, IDs and data.
Stop 06The first busy weekend: monitoring, support and a card reader restarted remotely.
Stop 078% in the first quarter: fixed costs, variable revenue.
Stop 08
Eight moments, one site. A charging hub is a construction project, a grid project and a service, all at once.
Where to go from here
Load management shows how chargers share one connection, Energy and grid integration how the hub fits into the power system, and Business models who earns what. See all learning paths.
Check your understanding
4 questions. Answer all of them to complete this stop. Each answer explains itself.
Which step took longest in this hub project?
The connection took about six months from signing (the offer of the deep dive); mounting the chargers took days.
Why could the AC points for staff run on the old connection?
Six AC points at 22 kW are 132 kW at most, and with load management even less.
What made the hub visible in apps on its first day?
AFIR requires operators to publish location, power, status and price; apps and maps use exactly that data.
The hub reached 8% utilisation. What does that mean?
Utilisation compares the energy delivered with the maximum possible: full power, all hours of the year.
- Site host The owner of the location, who provides the parking spaces for the chargers. EV charging fundamentals, stop 02 Glossary
- Utilisation How intensively a charger is used, for example in sessions or energy per day. EV charging fundamentals, stop 07 Glossary
- Medium voltage The grid level between the high-voltage network and the 400-volt street grid, in Germany 10 to 30 kV; fast-charging hubs connect here with their own transformer. Stop 02 Glossary