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OTTAWA, Canada – January 13th, 2023
BluWave-ai announced today the launch of the EV Flight Test Center at its Ottawa Canada Headquarters. The EV Flight Test Center provides a facility to test BluWave-ai’s AI-enabled products with worldwide connectivity before live deployment with customers. These include EV Fleet Orchestrator, EV Everywhere, and components such as BluWave-ai’s smartphone apps for vehicle operators and utility end customers with EVs. The EV Flight Test Center provides BluWave-ai’s customers a test venue for their chargers and associated networks before they are installed and operating at their sites. The real chargers in the EV Flight Test Center will be complemented by digital twins, to build a hybrid environment that will enable us to validate our software at scale before our software flies in live operations. This enables systems to be tested, ready for deployment ahead of completion of customer fleet electrification construction and grid upgrades. While the flight test center’s core operations are in Ottawa, Canada the product can connect remotely to charger systems anywhere in the world and test optimization solutions.
"Studies are showing that distribution utilities will need to commit, and continuously invest in grid upgrades in order to accommodate every EV being added to their system as a greater proportion of vehicles become electric." said Guillaume Paradis, Chief Electricity Distribution Officer at Hydro Ottawa. "With the anticipated influx of electric vehicles expected on our distribution network, we are proactively addressing this problem, and trying to minimize requirements for infrastructure expenditure. This includes investigating how software, from partners like BluWave-ai, can be used to optimize charging capacity, reduce grid congestion, and ultimately avoid costly upgrades. Key to this objective is testing approaches in a replica environment before they go live, which is what BluWave-ai is enabling with the EV Flight Test Center. This will allow us to determine the best approach for our distribution system."
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. Other chargers at remote customer or partner charger vendors sites can be added to the network and tested anywhere in the world by connecting to BluWave-ai Edge and Center, a cloud-based AI platform. Working with BluWave-ai’s simulation environment this allows remote charging infrastructure to be tested with BluWave-ai products before full operational deployment. The EV Flight Test Center provides a platform for connectivity to devices in the cloud and over the worldwide 5G network. BluWave-ai is also testing various third-party vendors’ EV chargers for OCPP compliance and interoperability with the BluWave-ai platform.
"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."
"As our utility grid customers and fleet operator customers do not have access to chargers live in their systems for several months before deployments, we needed a test center before our software goes live and is de-risked, " said Thomas Triplet, Senior Director of AI and Engineering at BluWave-ai, "Taken from the theme of the mission critical aviation world where software is test flown in simulators before it flies in the real world with test pilots, we believe it is essential to invest our capital in establishing our own grid and fleet software test center. 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."
An overview of the BluWave-ai EV Flight Test Center is provided by some of our team in the following video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0EKbiwQ1IhQ
To purchase BluWave-ai’s EV Fleet Orchestrator™ and EV Everywhere products or to participate with BluWave-ai’s interoperability testing, please contact [email protected]
The BluWave-ai EV Flight Test center is partially funded by support from Fed Dev Ontario. For project details click here.
About BluWave-ai
BluWave-ai is focused on driving the proliferation of renewable energy and electric transportation worldwide. Our solutions apply artificial intelligence (AI) cloud software to optimize the cost, carbon footprint and reliability of different energy sources, both renewable and non-renewable, in real-time. This lets our customers – utilities, fleet operators and electricity system operators to improve their energy-related decision making in planning and in live systems to decrease costs and carbon footprint. Every day our employees come to BluWave-ai with the mission to decarbonize the planet by using hardware assets more efficiently with AI software while we build the world's premier renewable energy and transport electrification AI company based in Canada.