Reka’s cables are electrifying car charging stations at housing associations
The ongoing transition to electric vehicles has brought as well a buzz to housing associations. “I have over twenty calls for bids on my table now, and about as many on the way from housing associations where the matter is under consideration now,” says supervisor Tatu Vattulainen from Enersense. One of their sites is As Oy Hietalahden Helmi, located in the Hietalahti area of Helsinki, where the charging stations have already been installed and are ready for use by residents.
Getting started at the ten-year-old housing association was easy, according to Tatu Vattulainen, as buildings of this age usually have some switchboard capacity reserved for auto charging needs. In this case, the housing association’s existing switchboard is ready and may even have outputs available for use, making the job noticeably faster and also reducing installation costs.
For example, at Hietalahden Helmi, a new charging centre was able to be installed in the parking structure directly and to be connected to the charging stations. Charging spaces were allocated for 20 vehicles, of which 14 were installed right away. The installation took just under three weeks in total, with cables produced domestically by Reka being used for the cabling work.
At this site, over 50 metres of cable was needed for the connection from the switchboard to the charging centre, and about 300 metres for the charging stations themselves. When working on a parking structure, fire safety regulations must also be taken into consideration. For this reason, higher-rated Cca cables were used for part of the cabling work. Dca fire class cables were used for the less demanding cable pulls.
“When electrifying these charging stations, advance planning is important. After all, every site is unique; and cable pulls and feedthroughs, for example, should be thought out well in advance. This way, we avoid surprises when we perform the work itself,” says Vattulainen.