E.ON Energie Romania put into operation the last fast charging station for electric vehicles out of the 19 that it undertook to install within the NEXT-E project, this being located in the parking lot of the Penny store in Lugoj. The charging station from Lugoj has a maximum power of 77 kW and is of fast charge type of 1×50 kW (direct current connectors CCS or CHAdeMO) + 1×22 kW (alternating current connector Type 2), with 2 parking spaces. Thus, the average charging time of an electric car will be about 40 minutes for 80% of the battery.

The initiative is part of the NEXT-E project, co-financed from European funds through the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) program, through which E.ON Energie Romania aims to install 19 fast charging units, another 21 being installed by MOL, one of the partners in this project.

So far, through the NEXT-E stations installed by E.ON Energie Romania, the owners of electric or hybrid vehicles have used over 46,000 kWh of electricity and have traveled over 310,000 km, the impact on the environment being a reduction of 37.2t of CO2. Most charges were made at the stations in Iasi, Suceava and Roman.

The stations are integrated in a monitoring and management system for loading sessions. This system provides non-stop monitoring of the unit and has the ability to remotely resolve any incidents that occur during charging. In addition, any problems at the charging stations can be reported by phone 24/7 to an E.ON call center.

The pan-European NEXT-E network will include 6 different countries, and 40 electric charging stations out of a total of 252 in the NEXT-E project will be installed in Romania.