'Buffer storage capacity of 2.2MWh'
http://www.upi.com/Science_News/2016/01/20/Charging-a-car-could-soon-be-as-quick-as-filling-a-tank/1481453308516/ Charging a car could soon be as quick as filling a tank Jan. 20, 2016 Brooks Hays [image http://cdnph.upi.com/sv/b/upi/UPI-1481453308516/2016/1/269e28603c1c5d37348f934199436330/Charging-a-car-could-soon-be-as-quick-as-filling-a-tank.jpg Chinese electric cars parked at a recharge parking lot in central Beijing. Researchers in Switzerland are working on technology that allows faster charging rates without draining the power grid. Photo by Stephen Shaver/UPI | License Photo ] "Electric cars will change our habits," said researcher Massimiliano Capezzali. LAUSANNE, Switzerland, Jan. 20 (UPI) -- Engineers say the power grid is holding back the development of the electric car. The storage capacity of batteries are continuously improving, as are the speed at which they can be charged and discharged. But high capacity, fast-charging batteries require large amounts of power to charge. Current infrastructure for electric car changing isn't up to the task. To supply that charge, a team of researchers at Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, have developed an intermediary power storage device. The technology can quickly charge a car without putting a drain on the power grid. The goal is to make charging an electric car battery as quick and easy as filling up a tank with gas. "We came up with a system of intermediate storage," Alfred Rufer, a researcher in EPFL's Industrial Electronics Lab, said in a press release. "With this buffer storage, charging stations can be disconnected from the grid while still providing a high charge level for cars." The intermediate storage device is essentially a giant battery, a lithium iron battery the size of a shipping container. It's constantly pulling power slowly from the power grid. When it's time, it can transfer a large amount of power to the car's battery. Right now, the device can charge the standard electric car battery in 15 minutes. "Our aim was to get under the psychological threshold of a half hour," said Massimiliano Capezzali, deputy director of the EPFL Energy Center and leader of the research project. "But there is room for improvement." As part of the project, researchers built models to predict the ways gas stations will need to adapt as gas-powered cars are phased out and replaced by large fleets of electric cars. The numbers suggest a station charging 200 cars per day would require a buffer storage capacity of 2.2 megawatt hours. That corresponds with a intermediate storage device about the size of four shipping containers. "Electric cars will change our habits. It's clear that, in the future, several types of charging systems -- such as slow charging at home and ultra-fast charging for long-distance travel -- will co-exist," said Capezzali. [© upi.com] http://ecomento.com/2016/01/21/will-it-ever-be-possible-to-charge-an-electric-car-as-fast-as-filling-a-tank-of-gas/ Will it ever be possible to charge an electric car as fast as filling a tank of gas? January 21, 2016 [image / Flickr | janitors http://cdn.ecomento.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/Charging-an-electric-car-as-fast-as-filling-a-tank-of-gas-740x425.jpg (Leaf EV) ] The amount of time it takes to charge an electric car today is one of the main obstacles to wider-spread consumer adoption. Even the quickest DC fast-charging stations generally take around half an hour for an 80-percent charge, which is still much longer than it takes to pump a tankful of gasoline. Will that ever change? Researchers at Switzerland’s Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL, via Phys.org) believe it might. They’re testing a concept called “intermediate storage” that’s meant to address one of major issue with increased charging speeds: the limitations of power grids. Increasing power flow cuts charging times, but it also puts extra strain on grid infrastructure, EPFL researchers note. They claim the solution actually involves disconnecting charging stations from the grid for periods of time. A lithium-ion battery pack is consistently charged at a low rate, and when a car plugs in to charge, that stored power is rapidly transferred to the vehicular battery pack. Grid electricity isn’t even needed to directly charge the car, researchers claim. The EPFL researchers and several partner organizations built a demonstration intermediate-storage battery pack mounted in a trailer. Drawing power from the same type of connection used for residential electricity needs, it can discharge 20 to 30 kilowatt-hours of electricity into an electric-car battery pack in about 15 minutes, researchers say. The team members behind the intermediate-storage charging station are already so pleased with their concept that they’ve moved on to calculating how much storage capacity will be needed at future commercial stations, even creating an equation for this purpose. They estimate that a station capable of quick-charging 200 cars per day would need storage capacity of 2.2 MWh, or about the same amount of energy consumed by a European household in one year. That works out to about four shipping containers full of batteries, the researchers say. If that’s true, then future electric-car charging stations may have to set aside a bit of extra real estate. [© ecomento.com] ... http://actu.epfl.ch/news/charging-an-electric-car-as-fast-as-filling-a-tank/ Charging an electric car as fast as filling a tank of gas 20.01.16 http://phys.org/news/2016-01-electric-car-fast-tank-gas.html For EVLN EV-newswire posts use: http://evdl.org/evln/ {brucedp.150m.com} -- View this message in context: http://electric-vehicle-discussion-list.413529.n4.nabble.com/EVLN-L3-EVSE-buffer-pack-between-grid-for-quicker-than-quick-charging-tp4680048.html Sent from the Electric Vehicle Discussion List mailing list archive at Nabble.com. _______________________________________________ UNSUBSCRIBE: http://www.evdl.org/help/index.html#usub http://lists.evdl.org/listinfo.cgi/ev-evdl.org Read EVAngel's EV News at http://evdl.org/evln/ Please discuss EV drag racing at NEDRA (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NEDRA)
