IPC Shopping Centre (formerly known as Ikano Power Centre) Mutiara Damansara has integrated its EV chargers into mobile app. The integration also marked the end of the free trial that was in place since August.
Located at the P2 floor of the mall’s basement parking, visitors had to call up a security guard to activate the charger and he then would also place a signboard that showed the charging duration that had been allocated to the vehicle. In addition to that, EV owners were only able to charge vehicles for just two hours.
Now, you have to first tap on the Facilities on the main screen of the app. In the following screen, choose EV Charging and the screen then will show you the charging bays that are still open.
After that, you are required to scan the QR code that is shown on the signboard that is located on top of the charger. Another screen will then appear which will ask you to plug the charging cable into your EV before selecting the payment method.
Once the charger is properly connected to the EV and the handshake process is successful, the third indicator light of the charger will stop blinking. After you choose your payment method, you will then be asked to set the duration of your charging session.
As shown on the app, IPC Shopping Centre has set the charging as RM7.00 / 30 minutes which is rather hefty. On the other hand, you will be provided with reward points which can be used to redeem free charging passes.
For each 30 minutes of charging time, you will receive 50 points. You can redeem 30 minutes of free charging time for 100 points.
That means, you can get 30 minutes of free charging sessions for every hour of charging time at the mall. Of course, you can freely use the points that you receive to redeem other items or services within the IPC Shopping Centre app’s reward catalogue.
Once you do that, what’s left now is to complete the payment and the charging process will begin. Do note that EV owners are given a grace period of 15 minutes to remove or repark their vehicle once their charging session is over.
The IPC Shopping Centre has four charging bays and each of them has been equipped with an ABB Terra AC charger. Even though they were set to deliver up to 22kW of energy during the testing period, they have since been tuned down to 11kW instead.
Given their proximity to the motorcycle parking area which has no fence, electric motorcycles can also be charged using these chargers. Of course, this is provided that they are equipped with a Type 2 AC charging connector such as the BMW CE 04.
Said to be the first mall in Malaysia to implement this, one of the charging bays has also been reserved exclusively for EV owners with disabilities (OKU). In addition to that, we were informed that IPC Shopping Centre is also one of the first to provide a fire blanket as one of the safety measures for its EV charging station.
Meanwhile, don’t forget that there is also a parking fee if you planning to charge your EV at IPC Shopping Centre. For the first three hours, it costs RM3.00 on weekdays and RM4.00 on weekends while there is an additional RM1.00 for every subsequent one hour or part thereof.
The IPC Shopping Centre app is available for Apple devices from the App Store and Android users can download it from the Google Play Store.
