Elanga – Entering the Australian market with Virta's premium CPMS

Elanga, an Australian-based EV charging solution company, relies on Virta's back-end system and smart energy management solutions to ensure fast market entry and bring Australian customers reliability.

“Virta offers us a lot of support. Whenever we have an issue or a question, especially technical ones, they always come up with an answer or a solution. Virta means good backup and support.”

- Billy Wepener, CEO of Elanga

Australian EV charging market on the rise

Elanga, an electric vehicle charging solution company, started operating in South Africa in 2016. They used its patented product focused on load management in EV charging to expand operations into Australia.

Shortly after setting up business in Queensland, Australia, they developed modular systems around EV charging infrastructure, which they used as a base to kickstart their operations in the country. The Queensland government was happy to support Elanga’s quest to bring smart EV charging solutions to the market.

In 2016, the EV charging market in Australia hadn’t been well-developed yet. There were only a few thousand electric vehicles on Australian roads. Since then, EV uptake has grown tremendously and surpassed 70 000 EVs in early 2023.

With that growth, a country-wide reliable EV charging infrastructure is needed. The Australian government is well aware of this need and has been offering various incentives and grants to kickstart the EV charging infrastructure market in the country.

The challenge: Developing own back-end system proved too costly

Since the EV charging market wasn't yet fully developed when Elanga started operations in Australia, they were a forerunner in EV charging solutions. They had two options when it came to developing the right solution.

"We could have developed our own back-end management system. That option would have cost us a lot of resources and taken a long time to get the solution to the market," explains Billy.

Their second option was to look for a partner. One that was well-established in the market and had a well-developed back-end system that Elanga could easily resell to their customers.

Elanga’s main customer segments where they see a big potential for the future are the public and the real estate sector. Both sectors have specific needs for EV charging.

The public charging sector allows Elanga to scale up its operations quickly. In Australia, shopping centres create unique opportunities to provide EV infrastructure on a larger scale.

“We needed a solution with the ability to scale easily," adds Billy.

The real estate sector and multi-unit high-rise buildings, a popular housing option in Australia, require specific solutions like load management.

So, the ideal partner needed to provide Elanga with easy scalability and load management solutions. They did research and looked at the availability of such partners.

And that’s when Elanga found Virta.

The solution: Virta’s charging solution with a reliable CPMS

“Virta was already well-established when we partnered up. They had exactly what we wanted to get us to the market quickly and without any hassle,” says Billy.

Elanga utilises the strengths of the Virta back-end system to open the door for many of its sales deals.

With Virta's charge point management system (CPMS), Virta Hub, Elanga enables customers to remotely monitor, manage and optimise their EV charging operations and make use of automated payments and invoicing.