Siemens tackles EV charging infrastructure with Coulomb-powered stations
Another conglomerate has entered the smart grid ring.
Siemens Energy on Thursday announced a new product line of electric vehicle charging stations that spans residential, public and commercial applications.
The lineup includes stations that mount on the wall and stand alone. The wall-mountable station is a 7.2-kilowatt, single-output station for homes and light commercial use (think retail); meanwhile, its public outdoor charging stations come in single and multi-level designs with dual power output.
The new EV charging stations are connected via Coulomb Technologies' ChargePoint Network, which is gaining traction among the biggest manufacturers of these stations.
With ChargePoint, the stations get smart, offering users 24/7 driver assistance, the ability to locate a charging station from any smartphone, the ability to detect charging station availability from a smart phone or Google Maps, EV trip mapping and driver billing -- as well as remote management and maintenance for the station's owner.
Because each unit is equipped with its own smart meter, the stations are intended to be a portal into the smart grid, allowing for advanced metering infrastructure, load shifting through demand response programs and the addition of generation capacity to handle widespread EV adoption.
Siemens offered the following reasons to justify its timing:
- North America is expected to lead global EV adoption between 2010 and 2013.
- Why? The Corporate Average Fuel Economy, or CAFE, program that mandates fuel efficiency across a manufacturer's fleet. The standard is set to increase from 27.5 mpg to 35 mpg by 2020.
Siemens' EV charging stations handle both plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, or PHEVs, and battery electric vehicles, or BEVs.
Photo: Siemens' Paul Maier, Roland Lartigue, Paul Camuti and Luis Giron with a charging station. (Kevin Wolf/Siemens)
This post was originally published on Smartplanet.com