charging on Typ-2 charging station on Saaremaa, Estonia

Digital Estonia

After a beautiful drive through the picturesque landscape of Estonia on roads, we arrived at the ferry port of Virtsu. Estonia is probably the most digital country on the world. Since almost 10 years, things like voting or submitting the tax declaration digitally are normal in Estonia. Of course, also buying a ferry ticket on the phone is an easy task. After being part of probably the smoothest “ferry-boarding-process” that we have ever experienced, we arrived on Saaremaa, Estonia’s largest island situated in the gulf of Riga.

Charging on Saaremaa

Estonia has an excellent network of charging station. The company Elmo is responsible for it. ABB is their hardware partner. A person working at ABB found out about our trip, contacted us and offered his help, whenever something wouldn’t work with the charging stations. We came back to his offer in Kuressaare, the capital city of Saaremaa. The first charging station that we approached didn’t really work (even though a Nissan Leaf was charging with the CHAdeMO charger). Unfortunately, our contact at ABB couldn’t help either. Luckily, there was another charging station in the city. That one worked without any problem. While we enjoyed the city and strolled through a local festival at the harbor, the car was nicely charging with 22kW.

Elmo charging app

One fact that we highly appreciate about the Elmo charging network in Estonia is that there is no special RFID-card needed to start the charging. One can download an app, create an account and manage the charging process through the app. Every charge costs around 4,50€, which we think is a fair price. I think, most EV-drivers are willing to pay the price for electricity for their charge. But no (travelling) EV-driver appreciates complicated authorization processes via RFID-cards that need to be organized before arriving to the country.

Enjoying our time on Saaremaa

We stayed one day longer on Saaremaa, because we just liked it a lot there. It’s a picturesque, quite island with nature reserves to hike and lots of streets with little traffic to cycle on. It is very likely that we’ll return to that beautiful place.