The RCO access control system has been in use for some time in Kumla Municipality’s buildings. When the municipality began using electric bicycles, there was a need for a well-designed solution for charging and storing electric bicycle batteries that could be integrated with the access control system.
The municipality didn’t just want a charging cabinet; the solution had to function as part of the existing infrastructure. The result was the ECO Charge OD BIKE 8 with the Entrance feature, integrated with Kumla Municipality’s existing access control system from RCO.
Electric Bikes as Part of the Workday
For facility management staff, traveling is a natural part of the workday. Employees work at various properties throughout the municipality and may need to travel between several locations during the same shift.
For longer distances, there are shared cars, but electric bikes are also used for many trips within Kumla.
“We work at various locations and often need to move around during the day. That’s when electric bikes are a very convenient way to get between our sites,” says Madeléine Gustavsson, a supervisor in the facilities management department at Kumla Municipality.
In a relatively compact municipality like Kumla, bicycles are also a good option for many of the shorter trips.
“Kumla is a municipality where we’re close to a lot of things. It’s often almost faster to take an electric bike or a regular bike to schools, senior living facilities, and other places than it is to take the car,” says Kent Åkerstrand, project manager for electricity and telecommunications at Kommunfastigheter, the Community Development Administration.
But as electric bikes become part of daily life, the storage and charging of electric bike batteries must also be handled in a well-thought-out manner.
Outdoor charging in accordance with the municipality's policy
The Municipality of Kumla has a policy prohibiting the charging of electric bicycle and electric scooter batteries inside municipal buildings.
This created a need for a solution that would allow the municipality’s own bicycle batteries to be charged outdoors, at a designated location, and as part of the organization’s regular routines.
“We were tasked with finding a charging solution for the electric bikes used by, among others, the janitorial staff and home care services. Our policy is that these types of batteries should not be charged inside our buildings, so we needed to find a good way to handle charging outdoors,” says Kent Åkerstrand.
ECO Charge became part of the solution, with freestanding charging stations placed outdoors.
Integration with the RCO access control system—a requirement from the start
For the municipality of Kumla, the issue was about more than just the charging itself.
The municipality has long had electronic access control systems in place in its buildings. When they began researching different charging stations, it was therefore natural to ask: Why create yet another separate access system when there is already an infrastructure in place for access control?
“From the start, it was a requirement that this system work in conjunction with our existing access control system. We didn’t want to end up with yet another bunch of keys and codes to keep track of; instead, we wanted to use the structure we already have,” says the project manager.
When the municipality discovered ECO Charge , they saw that the charging cabinets could be customized with different types of control systems, but they wanted to take it a step further and integrate the solution with their existing RCO system.
“We already have access control systems in our buildings. So it seemed natural to ask why we couldn’t use the same system for the charging stations as well. We wanted the solution to work in conjunction with what we already had,” says the project manager.
In collaboration with EWF, a solution was therefore developed in which ECO Charge Entrance was integrated with the municipality’s RCO access control system.
Benefits in Administration and on the Front Lines
By connecting ECO Charge OD Bike to an existing RCO access control system, the municipality does not need to set up a separate access structure. Access rights can be managed digitally, and a lost tag can be deactivated in the system, rather than the municipality having to manage additional physical keys.
For the user, the idea is much simpler: charging should simply be a natural part of the workday.
“It’s very convenient that the charging cabinet works in conjunction with our access control system. We already use the access control system when moving between the municipality’s various facilities, so it’s easy even when we need to pick up or drop off a battery,” says the facility management supervisor.
This is also a key concept behind ECO Charge Entrance. Instead of the charging cabinet being a standalone unit—and yet another system to manage—it can be integrated into the business’s existing infrastructure.
From Startup to More Locations
Today, the municipality of Kumla installed three ECO Charge OD Bike charging cabinets at two locations for businesses in sectors such as facility management and home care services.
However, the municipality views the first installations as the beginning of something that can grow as the need arises.
“The idea is that we’ll be able to expand this to more properties in the future—for example, at schools, city hall, or other facilities where we use electric bikes and need charging stations,” says the project manager.
For the municipality of Kumla, the initiative thus became more significant than the question of where to charge an electric bike battery.
Through integration with the municipality’s RCO access control system, the charging infrastructure becomes part of the existing workflow, rather than yet another separate system to manage.
Further Reading
Would you like to learn more about charging cabinets, integrations, and safe charging of electric bike batteries?
How Integration Between Charging Cabinets and Access Control Systems Works
ACE enables public e-bike charging
Here's how Vagnhallen combines safe charging with easy management
