Preparing one of Portugal's tallest buildings for e‑mobility

The Infinity building is a luxury condominium located in Sete Rios, Campolide, Lisbon. Owned by Portuguese property developer Vanguard Properties, it is one of the city’s largest residential projects, with above-ground 26 floors, 195 apartments and 352 parking spaces — in total covering more than 50,000 m² of floor area.

The developer envisages Infinity as an iconic residential spot in Lisbon’s city centre with environmental engineering and sustainability at its core. To this end, Vanguard has engaged Siemens Smart Infrastructure to supply and install 200 VersiCharge wallboxes and an intelligent charging management system in the building.

The building’s integrated electric vehicle (EV) charging solution was customised by Siemens engineering and software teams in Portugal, and allows for dynamic and intelligent onsite charging management. The VersiCharge wallboxes are distributed over six charging islands, across three floors of the building.

The dashboards, which Siemens describes as intuitive and easy to use, present comprehensive information to the building manager or operator who can instantly view all information about each charger, as well as monitor energy consumption in real time. Precise reports per apartment based on monthly consumption are produced, facilitating optimisation of the building’s energy performance.

Siemens has provided an intelligent charging management system to the Infinity building, one of the tallest residential sites in Lisbon, Portugal.

This energy management system is also ready for the future integration of photovoltaic or other renewable energy generation, as well as energy storage systems that will contribute further to energy efficiency and the reduction of the building’s greenhouse gas emissions. The system includes the latest cybersecurity functionalities.

“Managing EV charging infrastructure via intelligent load management is crucial for sustainable energy systems and grid stability,” said Markus Mildner, CEO eMobility at Siemens Smart Infrastructure.

The contract includes delivery of the scalable SICAM Dynamic Load Management (DLM) system, based on the SICAM A8000 power automation platform. The SICAM A8000 series is a modular device range for telecontrol and power grid automation applications in all areas of energy supply. Robust and responsive, SICAM DLM is a charging station management system that is prepared to receive grid constraint signals from distribution system operators (DSOs) and to integrate local distributed energy resources (DER) and energy storage systems — important features for the energy transition.

It facilitates communication with chargers, from which it extracts information related to consumption and offers dynamic charging management algorithms. As part of the Siemens Xcelerator portfolio, an open digital platform designed to help customers accelerate their digital transformation easier, more quickly and at scale, the device supports a dynamic load management strategy for the operators of the building.

Vanguard’s sustainability goals for Infinity fit in with Portugal’s recovery and resilience plan, which includes the deployment of 15,000 EV charging stations by 2025.

“Real estate activity has a considerable impact both environmentally and socially on the community,” said José Cardoso Botelho, CEO of Vanguard Properties.

“Infinity is a project of immense pride to us, and an important reference of our digital transformation. We are glad to have collaborated with Siemens to create a sustainable building for tomorrow.”

Top image caption: The Infinity building is a luxury condominium by Vanguard Properties located in Sete Rios, Campolide, Lisbon. Images: Supplied.