Parking Keerdok is a new parking garage, completed in 2022, a walking distance from the city center of Mechelen, with a 528 parking spaces for personal cars, a charging infrastructure for personal e-cars, the car, bicycle and scooter sharing systems and a bicycle storage station with charging infrastructure for e-bicycles. It also has office space and a supermarket.
The building was designed by POLO architecture. The innovation of this building, of its design, is in the flexibility of adjusting the building to the current needs and of the possible future scenarios of societal needs.
The parking garage has a 172kWp solar plant, which does not always cover the energy needs of the entire building.
The solar plant should be sufficient to cover the needs of the building itself, but comes short of energy even on a sunny day when e-vehicles are charging. In such cases, when the consumption cannot be covered by solar system the electric energy is taken from the grid.
“The City of Mechelen wished to have more solar panels on the roof and on the side, but the architects argued that more solar panels would ruin the aesthetics of the building and partially prevent flexibility of the building to adapt to the possible future changes,” stated Ann Vandeurzen from Mechelen city administration.
The building has higher built floors, so that an extra floor can be added in between each existing floor. The parking space is columns free, to be safe for the future self-driving vehicles. On the other hand, this allows an easy retrofit to residential units, whether apartments, offices, shops, a school or a kindergarten. The building already has offices in the last two upper floors, which are insulated with wood and glass and arranged into a bigger shell. The rooftop above the offices has a small garden with trees.
The building was financed by a private investor and the City of Mechelen coordinated the project. The investment costed 20M EUR.
The plan is to build residential housing nearby. The parking garage will serve for long term or short-term parking. Additionally, car-sharing system is already established and what is more, a vehicle to grid (V2G) energy exchange is being tested, allowing max 30% of the vehicle battery discharge per event. Energytix company set up 4 DC and 20 AC charging stations and 2 V2G DC charging stations, however, cable installations are laid down throughout the building, enabling the future set up of charging stations for every parking lot. When a demand will exceed the current supply, new charging stations will be set up. The charging infrastructure is running since November 2022.
The payment is enabled on a wall “box” with a POS terminal. On a display, the customer chooses a charging point number where a car is plugged in, a preferred spend amount of money on a charge regarding the energy required, a payment card, whether a debit or a credit.
There is no need for downloading an APP, giving away your e-mail address, or other data, no need for RFID cards, or signing contracts with the charging points operators, or deciding for subscription packages. Of course, one can still do all of this and according to a certain group of charging service providers, save some money. However, according to the Energytix, the system of paying for charging services with payment cards ensures price competitiveness compared to the prices of other service providers because it excludes the costs of the eMobility Service Provider network or other systems via eRoaming. In addition, the advantage of this system is that the payment method is even easier than paying fuel on a self-serving fuel station.