Austria

SMATRICS, a joint venture between VERBUND, OMV and Siemens, is a leading provider of electromobility services and is the first and only provider to operate a nationwide charging network in Austria covering the whole country (83,879 km2).

SMATRICS operates in Austria a nationwide high-speed charging network. More than 435 charging stations are already available today. Some 210 of them are high-speed ones with 43 or 50 kW output and are located along motorways and in urban centres, covering also the Rhine – Danube TEN-T corridor. There are around 12,000 active users in Austria.

Partners involved: SMATRICS, VERBUND, ABB, BMW, VCC

Current problems related to charging in the area

There is no booking possible today, as there is no reliable information if a charging point is not occupied by a parked vehicle. Plug & Charge feature must be deployed in the network to be ready for the market developments and to improve the user experience. Network connection for superfast charging stations carries prohibitive connection costs, thus leading to foreseeable shortages of available power to customers.

Short description of planned demonstrations

  • Implementation of the ISO 15118 Plug & Charge feature in the SMATRICS back-end as regards fast charging stations and upgrade of 2 charging stations interfaces by ABB
  • Standardised communication of charging stations to the back-ends
  • Parking sensors and provision of such information to the users
  • Implementation of dynamic communication between a local micro grid (stationary battery, local generation) and superfast charging stations to increase maximum power available