Faster L2 charging should be standard

[LeftieBiker]

Things are going backwards: I just read in my local EV group that ChargePoint is now installing charging stations that, instead of providing up to 7kw per car, will now divide that number between the cars charging at the station. Thus, two cars charging at a two car station will each receive about 3.3kw...

 

[tkdbrusco]

Once the norm becomes a 150+ mi EV, in 4+ years, and these models vastly outnumber the Gen1s on the road, my guess is that you will see little to no need for L2 chargers in most places, except for maybe large employers where cars sit for hours anyways. Almost all chargers will be DCQC or Supercharger networks. The public charger will solely be a means to take a longer than normal road trip and in these situations, you want to be able to charge quickly. In this fight, I see Tesla winning because they have been doing this since day one. As long as they can keep up their network of charge stations and expand capacity, they are good to go. I'm actually surprised that gas stations aren't future-proofing their infrastructure with an area of DCQC. If Chevron, Shell, BP, whoever decided to roll something like this out, there would be a consistent place to go to for charging. They could probably also overcharge, like $.75/kwh and also get away with it because these would be road trip only chargers. Even at .75/kwh, you're still at roughly the same price as filling up an ICE car at a gas station.

 

[cwerdna]

Things are going backwards: I just read in my local EV group that ChargePoint is now installing charging stations that, instead of providing up to 7kw per car, will now divide that number between the cars charging at the station. Thus, two cars charging at a two car station will each receive about 3.3kw...

That's w/the CT4000 series (the only current ones sold, AFAIK) only if the site has a single 40 amp feed instead of a 40 amp feed for each handle.

Since Chargepoint doesn't own the stations (except for maybe the ones at their HQ), it's likely up to the owner of the stations as to what they choose. More info below.

At my work, we have a whole bunch of their legacy ones and 3 CT4000 series. Initially, the CT4000 were installed each w/only a 40 amp feed per station, so there would be the power sharing. Eventually, our facilities people added 3 40 amp feeds so each handle had their own.

The older dual handle stations required 2 40 amp feeds.

http://www.chargepoint.com/press-releases/2013/0718" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
http://insideevs.com/chargepoint-introduces-ct4000-series-charger-with-unique-power-sharing-option/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

A list of all their station types at http://www.chargepoint.com/support-guides" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;.

 

[cwerdna]

Once the norm becomes a 150+ mi EV, in 4+ years, and these models vastly outnumber the Gen1s on the road, my guess is that you will see little to no need for L2 chargers in most places, except for maybe large employers where cars sit for hours anyways. Almost all chargers will be DCQC or Supercharger networks.

Re: your last statement, I hope you realize how costly it is to install a DC FC. See http://www.mychevysparkev.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3753&start=0" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;. And, then there's the issue of demand charges.

 

[edatoakrun]

I hope that in ~five years BEV drivers (and those who are not) will finally understand there is no reason to have a charger in your BEV at all.

No, thanks! I want a charger in my car if for no other reason than the convenience of being able to plug in anywhere...

Having the charger in-car is really not a convenience, it imposes multiple limitations. on BEVs.

Where kW rates are available at the charge site at higher rates than the on-board charger, the slower onboard charger is only a bottleneck preventing faster charging. It often prevents the desirable kW rate for any BEV at any charge site, which is either the maximum the grid infrastructure at that location supports, and (far less frequently) the maximum the battery will accept (~48 kW for A ~24 kW pack like the LEAF's) both subject to kW cost/rate considerations.

An on-board charger can not be used to charge other BEVs (yours, or other drivers') while you are not using it, making its use extremely costly and inefficient, by requiring us to collectively pay for many more chargers than are necessary to service all BEVs public charging requirements.

An on-board charger adds large additional costs, weight an complexity to BEVs, and almost all of them probably will be thrown away when the BEVs reaches the end of their useful life.

An on-board charger will never allow vehicle-to-grid kW transfer, which will add additional value to the significant investment (the bigger the pack, the greater the benefit) every BEV owner has made in their battery pack.

The "waste" heat produced from the on-board charger is not recoverable, while, if the on-site charger is properly located, this heat can be recovered to meet the needs of the human passenger activities while they are charging.

As I mentioned before, before the transition to on-site chargers is complete, you may want to carry a portable charger with you, especially when driving in remote areas.

At some point in the future though, I expect that notion will probably seam about as qaint as carrying your own fuel pump and hose with you, just in case the gas station you are headed to doesn't have any fuel pumps on-site.

Edit: re-posted on-topic at:

Take my on-board charger...PLEASE!

http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?f=26&t=19953" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

 

[GetOffYourGas]

I have to believe this drive to keep jacking up the charge current must be from the leasing people that likely could care less about the battery after their 3 years end. For owners, we do not need heat inducing current level ripping through the battery. At best it only does a little damage. At worst, especially combined with other environmental factors, it can be horrible to the long term life of the battery.

I personally do not see lack of high speed charging, either in amount of current or stations, is the problem. We will never get to Star Trek levels where someone plugs in a power pack and the blue line moves from empty to full in 10 seconds. The more important issues are battery range and battery life. Diverting resources to build out chargers of this type makes no sense.

I own my Leaf, and intend to continue driving it for 9-10 years.

The vast majority of my charging is at home. I have a 15A/240V Voltec EVSE in my garage, and use a combination of that and L1. I try to only charge on L1 in the summer time, to reduce the amount of heat being generated in the battery.

But when I am looking to charge away from home, I want it to be as fast as possible. I am not too concerned about heating up the battery ~1-2 times/month.

Having the charger in-car is really not a convenience, it imposes multiple limitations. on BEVs.

Where kW rates are available at the charge site at higher rates than the on-board charger, the slower onboard charger is only a bottleneck preventing faster charging. It often prevents the desirable kW rate for any BEV at any charge site, which is either the maximum the grid infrastructure at that location supports, and (far less frequently) the maximum the battery will accept (~48 kW for A ~24 kW pack like the LEAF's) both subject to kW cost/rate considerations.

An on-board charger can not be used to charge other BEVs (yours, or other drivers') while you are not using it, making its use extremely costly and inefficient, by requiring us to collectively pay for many more chargers than are necessary to service all BEVs public charging requirements.

An on-board charger adds large additional costs, weight an complexity to BEVs, and almost all of them probably will be thrown away when the BEVs reaches the end of their useful life.

An on-board charger will never allow vehicle-to-grid kW transfer, which will add additional value to the significant investment (the bigger the pack, the greater the benefit) every BEV owner has made in their battery pack.

The "waste" heat produced from the on-board charger is not recoverable, while, if the on-site charger is properly located, this heat can be recovered to meet the needs of the human passenger activities while they are charging.

As I mentioned before, before the transition to on-site chargers is complete, you may want to carry a portable charger with you, especially when driving in remote areas.

At some point in the future though, I expect that notion will probably seam about as qaint as carrying your own fuel pump and hose with you, just in case the gas station you are headed to doesn't have any fuel pumps on-site.

Edit: re-posted on-topic at:

Take my on-board charger...PLEASE!

http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?f=26&t=19953" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Every single one of your "limitations" can be overcome by having both an onboard charger and a DC input port - just like the majority of Leafs on the road today.

The advantage of the on-board charger, which will persist until public chargers are as common as gas stations, is that it turns every single electrical outlet into a potential source of energy. I would personally be OK with the option of mobile low-power (maybe up to 3kW or so?) charger for use at campsites, friends' houses, etc. But I would absolutely have to buy one. I would carry it with my every time I think I might exceed my range. If 5 years hence, manufacturers go this route, and start to phase out on-board chargers, that would be ok with me. But keep in mind, this external charger would be more expensive/less convenient than an integrated charger. In many parts of the country, it will be an absolute necessity for a long time (multiple decades would be my guess).

Edit: Almost every limitation. The onboard charger certainly adds cost, weight (although trivial), and complexity (again, arguably trivial) to the car.

I'm also not sure why you think the waste heat is recoverable for an off-board charger but not on-board. In the times that heat is beneficial, one could use that heat to preheat the car. I'm not sure there is enough heat, though, to make a difference either way.

 

[ydnas7]

I hope that in ~five years BEV drivers (and those who are not) will finally understand there is no reason to have a charger in your BEV at all.

No, thanks! I want a charger in my car if for no other reason than the convenience of being able to plug in anywhere.

In parts of Europe where there is three-phase electricity available, it is trivial to have high-power chargers in the vehicles. It is a bit more difficult in the U.S. with one-phase power, but it is certainly very doable. AC interconnections are much simpler than DC for a variety of reasons, one of them being that it is much easier to break the circuit.

My expectation is that over the next decade, for EU etc 3 phase 22kW will become the standard onboard for vehicles with a PM motor like the Renault ZOE does today. How well that translates to single phase regions? I don't know. But I suspect 20 kW single phase onboard will become standard everywhere else. It will take time, its a more challenging design issue than reverse cycle heating /cooling.

I don't know if 43kW Chameleon will survive, it may die, it may grow to 86kW onboard charger, it may be subsumed by Tesla going to 43kW onboard!

 

[mjblazin]

Isn't 86KW at 220 volts 390 amperes? That is 115HP. I cannot picture that kind of juice going to a plastic docking station or letting any Joe schmuck hook it to the car.

 

[JimSouCal]

Once the norm becomes a 150+ mi EV, in 4+ years, and these models vastly outnumber the Gen1s on the road, my guess is that you will see little to no need for L2 chargers in most places, except for maybe large employers where cars sit for hours anyways. Almost all chargers will be DCQC or Supercharger networks. The public charger will solely be a means to take a longer than normal road trip and in these situations, you want to be able to charge quickly. In this fight, I see Tesla winning because they have been doing this since day one. As long as they can keep up their network of charge stations and expand capacity, they are good to go. I'm actually surprised that gas stations aren't future-proofing their infrastructure with an area of DCQC. If Chevron, Shell, BP, whoever decided to roll something like this out, there would be a consistent place to go to for charging. They could probably also overcharge, like $.75/kwh and also get away with it because these would be road trip only chargers. Even at .75/kwh, you're still at roughly the same price as filling up an ICE car at a gas station.

I see an entirely different usage consumption model, at least in urban environments, of more chargers rather than greater battery capacity, given that the electricity infrastructure is largely already in place.... We will see...

 

[asimba2]

Demand charges can easily be 90% of the cost of a public EVSE installation, even for Level 2. For a Level 2 installation, Southern CA Edison charges $134.17 base rate for the meter, $1,752/mo demand charge for installations below 40kW plus the cost of the electricity. In a recent study, 92% of the EVSE costs were the demand charges. The cost to charge each vehicle can be extremely high, mostly due to the demand charges that are assessed regardless of the amount of electricity used. These high demand charges are why many public EVSEs charge 2-3X the going rate for electricity. That's Level 2. DCFC has considerably higher demand charges, raising the cost per vehicle significantly more.

I'd love to see some quotes for demand charges for a 100kW+ 7-stall supercharger station.

 

[ObjetDart]

I am sooo lucky to have this QC infrastructure! I truly have a viable, regional EV for all trips within say 350 miles or so.

Unless you want to travel to Oakridge, Klamath Falls, Crater Lake, or anywhere in the vast swath of land east of I-5 and south of Bend. I live in Eugene and I am constantly frustrated by this gaping black hole in the plugshare map.

But overall I agree, we have it really, really good here in Oregon!

 

[GetOffYourGas]

Demand charges can easily be 90% of the cost of a public EVSE installation, even for Level 2. For a Level 2 installation, Southern CA Edison charges $134.17 base rate for the meter, $1,752/mo demand charge for installations below 40kW plus the cost of the electricity. In a recent study, 92% of the EVSE costs were the demand charges. The cost to charge each vehicle can be extremely high, mostly due to the demand charges that are assessed regardless of the amount of electricity used. These high demand charges are why many public EVSEs charge 2-3X the going rate for electricity. That's Level 2. DCFC has considerably higher demand charges, raising the cost per vehicle significantly more.

I'd love to see some quotes for demand charges for a 100kW+ 7-stall supercharger station.

Sounds like a great economic case for installing some stationary batteries. The local batteries can be trickle charged, so long as the duty cycle of EVs charging is low enough. If too many EVs show up for the battery, then in theory that means that the charger is generating that much more revenue - enough to cover the extra demand charge.

 

[ydnas7]

Isn't 86KW at 220 volts 390 amperes? That is 115HP. I cannot picture that kind of juice going to a plastic docking station or letting any Joe schmuck hook it to the car.

http://www.voiture-electrique-populaire.fr/actualites/renault-charge-ultra-rapide-86kw-voitures-electriques" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
http://www.avem.fr/img/news/2011/velcri_grenoble.jpg" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
just a Mennekes connection, just like global spec Tesla or Renault ZOE
thats a big box though

 

[smkettner]

Things are going backwards: I just read in my local EV group that ChargePoint is now installing charging stations that, instead of providing up to 7kw per car, will now divide that number between the cars charging at the station. Thus, two cars charging at a two car station will each receive about 3.3kw...

I would prefer to have two plugs sharing the 40 amp supply vs pull up and the only one is taken. On a larger scale I would rather see 20 plugs vs 10 if power is limited to 400 amps. Power is always limited.

 

[ishiyakazuo]

Things are going backwards: I just read in my local EV group that ChargePoint is now installing charging stations that, instead of providing up to 7kw per car, will now divide that number between the cars charging at the station. Thus, two cars charging at a two car station will each receive about 3.3kw...

I would prefer to have two plugs sharing the 40 amp supply vs pull up and the only one is taken. On a larger scale I would rather see 20 plugs vs 10 if power is limited to 400 amps. Power is always limited.

Yup. Infrastructure is the key element here. Maybe they found that getting a 40A dedicated per plug was a dicey proposition and this will have more uptake. If that's the case, then I am all for it. More plugs are definitely better than less plugs, regardless of the current being supplied. (On the other hand, I drive a 2012, so I'm sort of in the "don't care how much current is being supplied" camp...)

 

[JPWhite]

Demand charges can easily be 90% of the cost of a public EVSE installation, even for Level 2. For a Level 2 installation, Southern CA Edison charges $134.17 base rate for the meter, $1,752/mo demand charge for installations below 40kW plus the cost of the electricity. In a recent study, 92% of the EVSE costs were the demand charges. The cost to charge each vehicle can be extremely high, mostly due to the demand charges that are assessed regardless of the amount of electricity used. These high demand charges are why many public EVSEs charge 2-3X the going rate for electricity. That's Level 2. DCFC has considerably higher demand charges, raising the cost per vehicle significantly more.

I'd love to see some quotes for demand charges for a 100kW+ 7-stall supercharger station.

With such demand chargers we should be asking to go in the opposite direction. Give me a 120v outlet on a wooden post or a lighting pole in the parking lot and I'll be happy.

 

[o00scorpion00o]

We have a have a large mount of 3 phase AC 22 kw points and it would make a lot of sense to be able to use them to their full potential.

The 6.6 Kw charger should be standard. I can get from 25-90 odd % in about 2 hrs, I really can't make people on local forums here realsise the value of the more powerful charger. It means I can go into town do whatever I need to do, come back to the car and drive home, no having to go look for a DC charger and then wait with the possibility of waiting for someone else to finish charging.

It also means the DC chargers can be freed up.

I would really like to see more powerful AC charging in Leaf II.

 

[GRA]

We have a have a large mount of 3 phase AC 22 kw points and it would make a lot of sense to be able to use them to their full potential.

The 6.6 Kw charger should be standard. I can get from 25-90 odd % in about 2 hrs, I really can't make people on local forums here realsise the value of the more powerful charger. It means I can go into town do whatever I need to do, come back to the car and drive home, no having to go look for a DC charger and then wait with the possibility of waiting for someone else to finish charging.

It also means the DC chargers can be freed up.

I would really like to see more powerful AC charging in Leaf II.

There's no question that faster L2 charging increases flexibility, the only question is how important will that be once range increases and you can do your routine daily driving plus spur of the moment errands without recharging. If you can put money into more battery or faster charging, I expect most would opt for the battery, and accept slower overnight charging to full. Still would be a good idea to offer faster L2 as an option, for those who want or can benefit from it.

 

[o00scorpion00o]

.
There's no question that faster L2 charging increases flexibility, the only question is how important will that be once range increases and you can do your routine daily driving plus spur of the moment errands without recharging. If you can put money into more battery or faster charging, I expect most would opt for the battery, and accept slower overnight charging to full. Still would be a good idea to offer faster L2 as an option, for those who want or can benefit from it.

The more electrics out there the more we'll need a greater charging infrastructure , our 22 KW AC points are a lot cheaper to install than the DC chargers and highly practical.

When batteries get larger people will still need to charge and 2 hrs on a AC point at 6.6 Kw is pretty decent. At least I would like to see a 10 kw AC point in Leaf II, 20 Kw, even better. Can't be that expensive at mass produced levels.

When batteries get larger people will want to charge even faster than the 45 Kw they can now, true but even 22 Kw AC has real potential.

BMW are installing a lot of 22 Kw or so Bosch chargers in Germany because in reality 45 Kw isn't that much faster. But AC points are still a lot cheaper. I'd rather see 22 Kw AC and faster DC for the times you do need to charge faster.