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1. General information
1. General information
The following article describes a standard configuration for home charging with eCarUp (for example for MFH / STEWG / MEG). Here, drivers pay by credit card and the credit is automatically transferred from the driver to the station owner.
The advantage of this variant is that the money is automatically transferred from the driver's credit card to the station owner's account. This has two key advantages:
The whole debt collection process is fully automated, eCarUp transfers the money of the transactions to the station owner's account immediately after they end.
This means that the money is never in the possession of eCarUp AG and all transactions (also e.g. of guests on the visitor parking lots) are within the applicable legal regulations.
You will find all further information about credit card billing and the legal regulations regarding the transferred credit in our Wiki.
Billing by credit card always results in a 10% commission, regardless of whether an eCarUp Premium license is active or not.
With the settings described below, the use case "charge at home by credit card" can be configured on eCarUp. The target state / benefits are as follows:
Stations are not publicly visible (only for invited special users).
Drivers can charge directly via the app or RFID card (chargeable)
Simple "onboarding" for the driver
Prices have to be adjusted only 1x per year (mass mutation)
As an extra, an account for free charging can be created (e.g. for the janitor)
An eCarUp Premium license is highly recommended for this use case (otherwise some important features like the maintenance tool, the reports or the extended user management with the user groups are missing)
2. Connect charging stations to the eCarUp backend.
2. Connect charging stations to the eCarUp backend.
First, the stations need to be connected to the eCarUp backend:
You can find an up-to-date list with all supported charging station models in our wiki
A step by step guide how to connect the stations is also available on our website
In order to transfer money to the account, it must be verified. You can find the information here: Verify account in eCarUp. We recommend to do this step before or during the installation of the charging stations. Without verification, eCarUp cannot transfer money to the account for legal reasons and no chargeable charges are possible.
The transferred money is continuously transferred to your station owner account and can be paid out to any IBAN at any time under the menu point "Account".
3. Set up charging stations
3. Set up charging stations
Once the charging stations have been connected to eCarUp, they will appear in the eCarUp account in the dashboard and in the station management.
Basic settings
Basic settings
After that, the stations can be set up by clicking on "Stations" and then "Station management":
Change name and description of the station
Delete stations
Set locations
Edit connections (if more than one)
Define connection types (e.g. Type 2,CSS or Chademo)
Max. Define energy (e.g. 22 kW)
Define access (Public, Limited and Private)
Public = all users / Limited = station owner and special user / Private = ONLY station owner or account in which the stations are installed
Set prices for energy and time
Define reserved times
Activate station from web portal
All settings for station owners are summarized in a wiki article.
Create station groups
Create station groups
Important for the management of the charging stations, is the organization in station groups (e.g. by locations or by apartment blocks):
Ready configured, it can look like this:
Create special user
Create special user
So that the stations can only be activated by the authorized drivers / end customers, the authorizations must be made accordingly. There are two ways to do this:
1. Maintain user groups
In this variant, a user group is created and assigned to the stations. This makes it easy to add or remove a new member from the user group when there is a change of tenant or a new driver. This makes the administrative effort smaller.
The stations are set to the status "limited
A user group is created with all authorized drivers
The user group is assigned to the station group
2. Assigning individual users to the stations.
In this variant, the individual drivers / end users are assigned to their respective stations, only the respective special user can activate his own charging station. This means that the accounts have to be assigned to the stations each time there is a change of tenant or a new driver, which means that the account has to be actively managed on an ongoing basis.
The stations are set to the status "limited
The correct driver account is activated with the correct price for the station.
A location for the station is stored
4. Inform drivers / end customers
4. Inform drivers / end customers
It is recommended to inform the drivers / end customers about the release of the station. Drivers must create their own eCarUp account for payment and provide a valid credit card as a means of payment:
A possible instruction / template to send to the drivers can be found on this page
All functions for drivers are summarized on a separate wiki page
There is also a FAQ for drivers with the most important questions and answers
Drivers can independently add RFID / NFC tags to their account and then use it to unlock the charging station
With eCarUp's flexible system, the administrative burden is minimized. The drivers / end customers can create and manage the accounts independently.
5. Label stations
5. Label stations
To enable drivers to unlock the stations without an RFID card and with the app, we recommend labeling the stations with a QR code and a short instruction text. This helps, for example, if a driver loses his RFID card or does not have it with him.
You can find some examples of labeling directly on a wiki page.
6. Visitor parking
6. Visitor parking
Charging stations can also be made public with eCarUp and thus billed to anonymous drivers. For this, the stations must be assigned the status "public" in the setup and a location must be set. In addition, the labeling of the charging stations is very important here, since the QR code can also be used for ad-hoc and thus barrier-free charging.
Other prices can also be easily assigned to the visitor parking spaces (see below).
Optionally, the stations can also be published in third-party charging networks via the roaming function. However, this is only possible if the station is publicly available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. You must also be aware that the station will then be found very widely (in various apps and car navigation devices) and thus attract foreign users.
7. Error analysis and correction
7. Error analysis and correction
With the help of the eCarUp portal, simple faults can be detected and the appropriate measures can be initiated. If stations are grayed out in the dashboard or in the station management and therefore marked as "inactive", they have lost the connection with the backend (longer than 10 minutes) and therefore cannot be used via eCarUp. There are two possible reasons for this:
Internet failure: restore the internet. As soon as the stations reach eCarUp again, the status will change to "available" or blue and can be used normally again.
Power failure: Restore the power supply. As soon as the stations reach eCarUp again, the status changes to "available" or blue and can be used normally again.
With the maintenance tool included in eCarUp Premium, the communication between charging station and backend can be tracked and a deeper error analysis can be done.
If the error is deeper, you have to contact the person responsible for the project (e.g. executing electrician).
Practical tip: To test or check the functionality of stations on site, an account can be created for the technical service or another responsible person on site (e.g. hauswart[at]musterhaus.ch). This account can be deposited at the stations as a special user with a price of 0 per kWh and 0 per h and can thus carry out tests without incurring costs.
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