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EV Fast-Charging Standards In Flux
savuporo writes "With the first battery electric vehicles becoming available on markets worldwide, there is an increased push to establish standards for fast-charging plugs. Unfortunately, the story is far from simple. The US hopes to establish its own DC fast-charging standard by 2012, and Europe cannot come to an agreement about their version. Meanwhile, the CHAdeMO fast-charge standard developed and widely deployed in Japan, used on both the Nissan Leaf and Mitsubishi MiEV, is gaining momentum with deployments underway both in the US and Europe. CHAdeMO is limited to a 62kW charge rate, able to charge smaller battery packs to 80% SoC in 15-30 minutes."
For those of you playing at home, SoC stands for 'State of Charge'.
There's no reason why an EV refueling station can't support multiple charge standards (as long as there are only a handful versus dozens).
One of the biggest expenses in setting up a charging station is in getting the high-power high-voltage power feed from the power company. Supporting a different connector or voltage adds a relatively small incremental cost to the charging station.
After all, gas stations already support diesel and 3 grades of gasoline (ok, technically it's just 2 grades and they blend them at the pump).
Obviously a fast switch of batteries is a better idea. I don't want to wait 15 minutes or even 5 to recharge. Then they can have fast chargers dedicated and efficient to re supply the batteries. I know batteries are expensive so the biggest obstacle is just figuring out a credit/ID system so that people can be trusted to trade $1000 batteries quickly.
Stupidity is its own reward.
Why don't you just shove the Japanese plug up your arse and turn it on full current. Why would we want foreign plugs?
Because they work well with our foreign cars?
Why don't you just shove the Japanese plug up your arse and turn it on full current. Why would we want foreign plugs?
Because they work well with our foreign cars?
Which are built in the U.S.?
Honestly, all that matters is that each region has a uniform standard, and is large enough that economies of scale will kick in.
You're unlikely to take your car to Japan with you, and what's more, since we're only really talking about SIGNALING, it's only going to take a few dollars worth of electronics to do the conversion. Sure, a $20 adapter so you can use your electric razor on another continent is inconvenient, but a $20 adapter so you can use you CAR? No problem.
Now, if the EU can't agree on a standard, that would be a problem. Wander across the border from Germany to France and you can't charge your car... Oops. And the added expense for charging stations to maintain two or more sets of chargers for different countries' vehicles wouldn't be cheap or easy to maintain.
Come to think of it... Are electric cars and hybrids coming with normal electrical outlets installed? 120/240V ? They really should. Could eliminate the "car adapter" market over-night, make traveling much easier and add a tremendous amount of utility to an electric vehicle... Even if utility power goes out, EVERYONE with an electric car could have a substantial backup. I can imagine lightning fast tire changes if you can power your impact tools on the road... But I digress.
As they say, as goes Estonia, so goes Lichtenstein! Clearly Japan is on course to dominate the world...
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Which are built in the U.S.?
Well, I think assembled is more accurate - most cars are assembled from pieces built all over the world.
IIRC, the Nissan Leaf is actually being assembled in Japan, since they aren't making enough of them yet for a U.S. factory to be worth it.
We already have standards for electricity and connectors. Why not use them?
IEC 60309
3P+N+E, 6h
CHAdeMO is limited to a 62kW charge rate
That is quite an energy transfer rate. Each charging station must be connected directly to an electrical substation to supply that sort of power to a few cars.
When it comes time to design the plug, they should make sure it's non-tapered so that it has to be perfectly lined up to go in the socket. It should also be perfectly symmetrical so it takes ten minutes get it in the socket correctly.
Their they're doing there hair.
That's it... they need the Flux Capacitor!
The CB App. What's your 20?
There's another reason that switching batteries is good. If a 62 kW supply is required to charge a battery in 30 minutes, you would need 360 kW+ to charge it in 5 minutes. That's a phenomenal power level. If your charging efficiency is 90%, that means you will be dissipating 36 kW in your car as heat while charging. That's pretty close to explosive.
The service station and the power utility would have an interest in leveling their load, so charging an inventory of batteries relatively slowly is a good thing. Even so, each recharging station might need a flywheel energy storage unit (or comparable) to even their load on the utility.
Fiat Lux.
No one is talking about all the new electric power plants that will be needed to supply this demand. What fuel will be used for these power plants? let me guess - oil? What about the distribution system? Is there sufficient capacity on that to allow everyone to charge their car at the same time (cos that's what will happen, a 'rush hour' of charging).
False. Most of the Leafs will be produced in Smyrna, TN, and the factory is under construction. But it wont be online until 2012, so for now, the low-volume Japanese production is all that's available.
Then the winter came, and the Grasshopper died. And the Octopus ate all his acorns. Also, he got a racecar.
IIRC it's the other way around, making it harder to mis-fuel a petrol vehicle than a diesel one. This doesn't make much sense considering the other way around is substantially more expensive, but there you go...
I am going to guess that mis-fueling a petrol vehicle is the more common error. Diesel owners, well at least in the US, are more likely to be carefully reading labels. Their pumps are not as common and they have to look around to locate their pumps.
When I was an expat in Thailand, a news story involved a Volvo station wagon that was converted to use LPG (propane) fuel, but the work was unregulated and had a gas fitting that allowed the driver to connect to a CNG (compressed natural gas) refueling station. These two fuels are stored at vastly different pressures, and the result was an immediate over-pressure and explosive rupture of the car's fuel tank, which ripped not only the car, but also the people nearby, into many pieces.
For electric hookups, you really need to control things like AC versus DC, max charge differential between terminals, max current, max surge, grounding, floating circuit potentials to ground, etc.
1) Li-ion battery packs are generally 96% to over 99% efficient during charging, not 90%.
2) 36kW is not "pretty close to explosive". That's the heat output of a moderately large home's furnace. You really think you can't simply water quench the output of a home furnace for a couple minutes?
3) You don't have to draw a rapid charge straight from the grid. A much more reasonable approach is to charge a shared battery bank at the station, and the battery bank discharges the proper amount whenever someone hooks up. Said batteries can be heavy and cheap instead of light and expensive, and are effectively a "universal standard" instead of requiring the station to stock a separate pack for each vehicle profile.
Then the winter came, and the Grasshopper died. And the Octopus ate all his acorns. Also, he got a racecar.
it's exactly the same problem as we have with current power plugs. the US will (eventually) have a standard and nobody in Europe will agree on one.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
"EV Fast-Charging Standards In Flux" get it? Charging - flux? oooops,
There was an unknown error in the submission.
So I was right that the present supply is a small amount imported from Japan, but wrong about the reason. Thanks.
One other problem no one seems to be mentioning, a typical modern U.S. home electrical connection is in the 100-200 amp service size (very large homes may have up to 320 amp (400 amp meters, but common meter bases are limited to 320 amps) service and smaller older, homes may have much less. A 200 amp service has a dedicated output power of 48KW per hour. A typical house at any given time will likely only draw a fraction of that power level even with energy hogs like air conditioners running. So we are not just talking a box and maybe an extra breaker being installed at every house to charge a car or two, but all new service entrance connections, breaker boxes, power lines to the houses, pole top transformers, etc. Then there is the question of upgrading the whole electrical grid and power generation system to provide power for these electric cars, sure time shifting will help some, but do you really want that 30 minute quick charge for your car to be scheduled at 3:30 am every morning, and what happens if you have an emergency and need a fully fuelled car on hand, this time shifting is really no better than the every other day fill up rationing back in the 1970's based on even or odd license plate digits.
The comments on the linked blog are much more informative than the ones in this Slashdot thread this time. The general consensus over there is that the German Mennekes (type II) connector is the one that will hopefully be used, as it is much more future-proof (3.7 - 43.5kW in one connector). Let's hope sanity wins in the end, and it wins over the other designs.
Remember, we should all be aiming towards universality and quality, since this one decision will have a massive effect for years, possibly decades to come.
Why OpalCalc is the best Windows calc
Its not only charging that matters.
Electricity companies want to Bid/Buy electricity off EV's at peak load periods.
If 'out of adapters' becomes a problem during an earthquake/snowstorm, then National infrastructure is threatened.
ONE socket is needed, and in future a common bid/accept protocol for EV buybacks.
The EU has had different, better automotive lighting standards for years, as well. The US has not managed to catch up to these, either.
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My biggest question is, what happens to all the batteries when they can no longer be charged or be used?? Would we need some sort of storage area set up in each state with hazardous waste restrictions or?? Would this turn into a situation whereby as in the nucleur industry that we know how to make and use the energy, but have no idea as to how to deal with the waste?? I will confess, this is not a subject I am all too familiar with.... so any help would be appreciated.
There's another reason that switching batteries is good. If a 62 kW supply is required to charge a battery in 30 minutes, you would need 360 kW+ to charge it in 5 minutes. That's a phenomenal power level. If your charging efficiency is 90%, that means you will be dissipating 36 kW in your car as heat while charging. That's pretty close to explosive.
thats around 10 times what your electric oven uses - which means a lot of heat but it is almost do-able to remove
...dedicated output power of 48KW per hour.
48 kW period. (Physics: A Watt is a unit of power. A Watt-hour is a unit of energy. A Watt per hour is a rate of increase of power.)
You won't be getting a "quick charge" at home without an expensive service upgrade. Overnight probably means up to 12 hours for a charge. That gets you about 288 kW-hr of energy if you draw 100 A on a 240 V circuit. In very rough terms, you can think of a kilowatt as a horsepower (1.3 actually). So you could run your high performance car at full power for 1 hr on an overnight charge. Your typical commute needs a lot less energy, but YMMV.
Fiat Lux.
hmm, what if specific lanes on the highways were designed to charge the cars.
no waiting. a car would connect to metal strips on these lanes.
What really gets me about this debate is that there is no pressing need for a DC quick charge standard in the U.S. for at least a decade if not two or three. The reason I can confidently say this is because a DC quick charger of this magnitude (400-600 Volts DC @ 250+ Amps) would require at least a 3 phase 480v main to drive it, and that's just one charger. I assume that a charging station would need to charge more than one car at a time and therefore need multiple 3 phase lines. If we wanted to convert even half our gas statons to electric charging stations we couldn't do it. The power grid in its current state is inadequate. It won't be in any shape to handle an electric economy for many decades. With all that in mind, I'd just like to remind everyone that there is no rush for the U.S. to adopt a DC quick charging standard.