Eaton joins EU project for EV infrastructure

Eaton recently announced its involvement in a research and innovation project seeking to deliver technologies and business models needed to support mass deployment of electric vehicle (EV) charging infrastructure throughout Europe.

Eaton’s Buildings as a Grid approach comprises three systems: EV charging, energy management and power distribution. Part of the consortium’s focus will include further work on the technology. (Photo: Eaton)

The €9.87M ($10.41 million USD) project, supported by the European Union’s Horizon Europe Research and Innovation Program, will span four years through March 2026 and cover the entire EV charging value chain. The project consortium, FLOW, includes 24 external partners and six leading universities across Europe led by Fundació Institut De Recerca En Energia De Catalunya.

Eaton’s role will involve further developing EV charging technologies, as well as demonstrating charging solutions, based on its experience in integrating the power needs of buildings and EVs with on-site renewable energy generation through its “Buildings as a Grid” approach.

The research and innovation focus will extend across:

• vehicle-to-grid (V2G) and vehicle-to-everything (V2X) capabilities that enable more system flexibility;
• DC-DC charging (direct current to direct current) that yields both power quality and control benefits;
• and further work on Eaton’s Buildings as a Grid Energy Management System that supports forecasting, optimization and other essential services.

Several Eaton business units will collaborate on the project in order to combine the various technologies into a complete solution, including the pan-European Eaton Research Labs team and the Eaton Center for Intelligent Power in Dublin, Ireland.

Eaton will demonstrate these technologies at test labs at the Eaton European Innovation Center in Prague, University College Dublin and the Fundació Institut De Recerca En Energia De Catalunya in Barcelona. In addition, it will support large-scale technology demonstrations in Rome and Copenhagen with its energy management systems.

For the Prague and Barcelona demonstrations, Eaton will collaborate with fast charging solutions provider Heliox for the Prague and Barcelona demonstrations. In Ireland, the company will work with University College Dublin and nearby Maynooth University, and in Prague, it will partner with RWTH Aachen University in Germany on a techno-economic analysis of EV charging infrastructure use cases. In Rome and Copenhagen, Eaton will collaborate on energy management system interoperability with transmission and distribution companies ENEL, Terna and Areti, as well as partners at Ricerca Sul Sistema Energetico and the Technical University of Denmark.