With the advance of the electric car in our joint fleet, the following issue arises: how do we ensure that the electricity used by those EVs is generated green? Energy supplier Engie has come up with a solution, because with them you can now charge your car while looking at the windmills that produced your electricity.
Fast and green
In the port of Ghent, Engie CEO Thierry Saegeman unveiled the first Belgian fast charging station that works entirely on self-produced wind energy in the presence of Flemish Energy Minister Zuhal Demir. Around the site on the R4 are three windmills from which the charger draws electricity directly — provided that a storage battery is used. The two charging points can each deliver a power of up to 175 kW simultaneously, but if you are lucky enough to be on the fast charger alone, a single charging point can handle a speed of up to 350 kW.
If your EV can handle that charging capacity, you would see about 200 kilometers of driving range on the counter in just ten minutes. The price is also not bad: Engie asks 40 cents per charged kWh, so that fully charging an EV with a battery of, for example, 50 kWh — such as a Renault Zoë — costs 20 euros here. This means that the price remains the same as that of the average public charging point without a fast charging option. With this project, the energy supplier mainly wants to investigate whether they can also realize such installations in other places in the country. We don’t see any problem with it, Engie.