Chakratec, a provider of kinetic energy storage technology for EV charging, has completed  a project with British hotel chain Premier Inn, enabling guests at the hotel’s Leipzig, Germany location to charge their EVs throughout their stay. Premier Inn is the first to deploy Chakratec’s charging technology in Germany, and Chakratec says this is the first indoor installation of its kind.

Chakratec provides Premier Inn with a solution for EV charging that circumvents the hotel’s problem of insufficient grid power. At most of Premier Inn’s city center locations, the grid is too weak to provide the required power for EV charging. To overcome this hurdle, energy storage must be added to the chargers. This is done by applying Chakratec’s Kinetic Power Booster (KPB), which stores electricity as kinetic energy in a fast-rotating flywheel. Chakratec says the KPB will deliver more than 150,000 high-power charge and discharge cycles, without degradation, over its 20-year system life.

In addition to enabling EV charging, the KPB’s energy management system handles peak loads to prevent high demand charges, while further add-on applications such as back-up power systems (BPS) ensure that EV chargers are always online. Premier Inn selected Leipzig as the first location to adopt the technology, and plans to install the system at its new sites throughout Germany over the next five years.

Premier Inn Facilities Manager Heino Schönwandt said, “By implementing Chakratec’s Kinetic Power Booster technology, we are able to offer our customers EV charging services without needing to upgrade our existing infrastructure. The fact that the technology is sustainable both environmentally and economically makes it a perfect fit for our efforts to make our operations cleaner and more environmentally friendly.”

Source: Chakratec