Parking lot P-Donitsi — *P-Donitsi parking garage in Leppävaara. Photo: JM Suomi Oy*

The P-Donitsi parking lot of Puustellinkallio Parking Oy is located in the middle of the apartment buildings in Leppävaara, Espoo, and has approximately 400 parking spaces.

The design of the parking garage has emphasized user-friendliness and economic efficiency from the beginning. Electricity consumption is billed fairly, and the user only pays for their own electricity usage.

eParking is responsible for operating the charging stations, and cars can be charged remotely using the eParking application. The charging or heating fee is determined by the electricity used at a kWh price determined by the property. It would also be possible to price electricity based on the charging speed.

366 chargers of different capacities

The parking house has:

6 pcs 22 kW charging points
32 11 kW charging points
328 3.6 kW charging points

3.6 kW slow charging points can be used for both charging and heating the car.

The parking garage is built in a spiral shape, with one continuous ramp circling the five-story building. Parking spaces are located along the edges of the ramp, along the inner and outer curves.

Due to the shape of the parking garage, the entire eParking system in the parking garage only needs one eParking Gateway network connection device to function. The charging points communicate with the network connection device and with each other using a ZigBee radio network connection, whereby the signal is transferred from one device to another, forming a mesh network. You can find more information about how the mesh network works in the eTolppa design guide.

Devices that talk to each other and connect to the eParking system's cloud service also enable dynamic load management. If a property has many simultaneous chargers and the property's power is not sufficient, load management ensures that the maximum electrical capacity or phase-specific current limits are not exceeded. This is done by adjusting the charging power to a lower level or by temporarily turning off the heating.

Drive-in access control also works with the eParking app. When a user makes a parking space reservation and enters the license plate number into the system, the drive-in camera reads the license plate and opens the gate automatically, if the reservation is valid. If the car or license plate information changes, the user can update it themselves in the app.

The monthly parking fee and electricity consumption are billed in one consolidated invoice per user.

A certain number of guests can also park in the parking garage at an hourly rate. In this case, parking is paid for per event using the eParking application.

The project was designed and implemented in collaboration with JM Finland.