Kanata North’s BluWave-ai recently launched an initiative that will ensure power grids around the world keep humming as more electric vehicles (EVs) hit the road.
The Ottawa-based EV Flight Test Centre was created to give BluWave-ai’s customers a way to test their charging products before they go live. While the flight test center’s core operations are in Ottawa, the product can connect remotely to charger systems anywhere in the world and test optimization solutions.
The core hardware is located at BluWave-ai’s headquarters with a variety of brands of EV chargers while the software runs on the cloud agnostic of the charger brand. Free charging is provided for employees and visitors with EVs in exchange for data on vehicle charging while on site.
Utility companies will now have a tool to assess their infrastructure needs on an ongoing basis, given that continuous investment in grid upgrades will be needed as EV rollouts scale.
“PowerON is delivering electrification solutions to transit and commercial fleet operators across North America, ” said Keegan Tully, Managing Director at PowerON Energy Solutions. “With the BluWave-ai EV flight test center, we are able to simulate depot operations in the BluWave-ai cloud, connected to real chargers in their labs. This allows us to de-risk and fully guarantee the performance of the system before chargers go live and are relied upon for operations by our customers.”
BluWave.ai’s customers don’t have the equipment to do the required testing and the EV Flight Test Centre solves that problem. By anticipating and understanding new demands for electric power, BluWave.ai is helping their customers strategically plan infrastructure development.
Benefits include:
- Optimizing charging capacity
- Reducing grid congestion
- Avoiding costly upgrades
Thomas Triplet, Senior Director of AI and Engineering at BluWave-ai likens the EV Flight Test Centre to pilot simulators.
“We believe it is essential to invest our capital in establishing our own grid and fleet software test center,” he said. “The chargers of our EV Flight Test Center will be complemented by digital twins, to build a hybrid environment that gives us unique capabilities to test cutting-edge technologies and to validate our software at scale before our software flies in live operations.”
Their product offerings include EV Fleet Orchestrator™ and EV Everywhere.
The BluWave-ai EV Flight Test center is partially funded by support from Fed Dev Ontario. For project details click here.
