OREANDA-NEWS. E.ON, Germany’s largest energy supplier, is the next big charging-infrastructure operator to become a partner of e-clearing.net, an open B2B roaming platform for electric vehicles (EVs). The platform, which aims to connect all relevant e-mobility players, enables its partners to share the data necessary to use their EV charging infrastructures. This makes it easy for EV drivers to roam in their home country and elsewhere. e-clearing.net shares the Germany federal government and the EU’s objective of providing EV drivers with unhindered, cross-border access to Europe’s entire charging infrastructure.

E.ON, which markets e-mobility charging solutions in ten European countries, wants to offer its customers greater roaming opportunities and to make its charge points open to the customers of other operators. E.ON operates more than 800 public charge points in Germany and Denmark alone, thereby extending the e-clearing.net platform into Scandinavia. “After just one year of operations, our German-Dutch platform is now active in six European countries,” says Dr. Mark Steffen Walcher, Managing Director of smartlab Innovationsgesellschaft mbH, which operates the platform.

“Our partnership with e-clearing.net will enable us to offer our e-mobility customers a Europe-wide roaming network of charge stations,” explains Bert von Garrel, Head of E-Mobility at E.ON. “Large multi-national companies in particular are increasingly interested in solutions for charging infrastructure. Cross-border access is a key feature of e-mobility products.”

e-clearing.net is a joint venture of Dutch foundation ElaadNL and smartlab Innovationsgesellschaft mbH of Germany. It has already attracted nine partners, making e-clearing.net Europe’s largest e-roaming platform. It consists of more than 6,500 online-compatible charge points. The partnership with E.ON will add about 800 more. The partners can use the platform to share the data necessary for user authentication, billing, and real-time monitoring of activity at charging points.

Data are shared via an open clearing house protocol (OCHP). The OCHP requires no license or fee and can therefore be used by all partners. The e-clearing.net platform is both open and non-compulsory: partners are not obliged to do business with one another and may freely choose the partners with which they wish to conclude bilateral roaming agreements. e-clearing.net provide partners with standard agreements for this purpose. The platform is open to new e-mobility partners. So far, E.ON and eight other companies – Bosch, BMW, DKV, Estonteco, EVBox, EVnetNl, ladenetz.de, Smartics, and The New Motion – have joined e-clearing.net. The preparations for more companies to become partners are under way, and a number of new operators of large charging infrastructures will be added by the end of this year.