The first large public eParking charging point

The REDI shopping center opened on September 20, 2018, but the first charging events were already made at the opening ceremony the day before. The arrival of a new charging operator on the market sparked discussion on social media, and our service was described, among other things, with the term MVP (Minimum Viable Product), which refers to an early product version intended for market testing. At that time, our eParking application was still in its early stages for public parking.

Listening to and taking feedback into account is of paramount importance to us. A customer who raises an unclear situation or suggests improvements helps us develop our service. We have received a lot of valuable feedback, based on which our application has been renewed and its usability has been improved. We are constantly developing our service to improve the customer experience.

REDI was the first major fully public facility that we operated. We had previously managed some public charging points, but our strategy has focused primarily on properties where charging is limited to specific user groups, such as residents or employees. We believe that charging will primarily occur during parking at home or work, where long-term parking allows for efficient charging without significant peak power challenges.

The REDI charging station was a significant expansion of our operations, although we had previously managed large charging areas at Tampere University's Hervanta campus, Technopolis and larger housing companies. In these locations, the user base is usually established, and individual users often use the same charging point.

How has REDI been charging and what have we learned?

REDI charging points have consumed approximately 50 megawatt hours of electricity during the year. There have been almost 7,200 charging events, and there have been over 1,300 different users. The average charging power has been 4.41 kW.

The data shows that the majority of charging has occurred at 3.6 kW or less. This indicates that many plug-in cars only use one phase for charging and that even public charging points still use plug-in sockets.

The average charging time at REDI has been 1.47 hours. The relatively short charging times are partly due to the fact that the area's building stock is not yet fully completed. As the area develops with more jobs and more people living there, long-term parking will become more common, which will likely also increase charging times.

at the Electric Car Night at REDI organized by Tesla Club Finland at the end of January.

Graphical representation of slow charging rates at shopping center charging stations — *Slow charging is really popular at REDI.*

*Since its inception, REDI's consumption volumes have increased.*

*There is a clear spike in usage rates when electric car drivers gathered for REDI's Electric Car Night event.*

*The number of monthly downloads has stabilized.*

The importance of REDI and collaboration in data analysis

REDI has served as a valuable example for us and an important reference for our new customers. We thank everyone involved for their cooperation!

For REDI, we have collaborated with a data analytics company that has analyzed the data received from the site. Their expertise has helped us understand what information is relevant to our customers and make meaningful inferences from the data. This analysis has been valuable for the development of our services.

With REDI, we have gained new significant customers, such as Tripla , Arabian Palvelu, Valtatie 30, Pasilan Pysäköinti and Finnpark .