In Short : Indian researchers have developed a self-charging solar energy storage device that integrates energy harvesting and storage into one unit. Designed as a photo-supercapacitor, the system captures sunlight and stores power simultaneously, eliminating the need for separate solar panels and batteries. The technology promises efficient, low-cost solutions for portable and off-grid energy needs.

In Detail : An innovative sunlight-powered supercapacitor called photo-capacitor developed by scientists can both capture and store solar energy in a single integrated device.

This could be a remarkable step towards clean and self-sustaining energy storage systems paving the way for efficient, low cost, and eco-friendly power solutions for portable, wearable, and off grid technologies.

Traditionally, solar energy systems rely on two separate units: solar panels for energy capture and batteries or supercapacitors for energy storage. While such hybrid systems are widely implemented from large-scale solar farms to portable electronics, they rely on additional power management electronics to regulate voltage and current mismatches between the energy harvester and the storage unit. This requirement increases system complexity, cost, energy losses, and device footprint, which becomes particularly detrimental for miniaturised and autonomous devices.

This new photo-rechargeable supercapacitor, developed by the Centre for Nano and Soft Matter Sciences (CeNS), Bengaluru, an autonomous institute under the Department of Science and Technology (DST), Government of India. seamlessly combined both processes converting sunlight into electrical energy and storing that energy for later, thus simplifying design and minimising energy loss during conversion and storage.

Under the guidance of Dr. Kavita Pandey, innovated with the help of binder-free use of nickel-cobalt oxide (NiCo2O4) nanowires, which have been uniformly grown on nickel foam using a simple in situ hydrothermal process.

These nanowires, only a few nanometres in diameter and several micrometres long, form a highly porous and conductive 3D network that efficiently absorbs sunlight and stores electrical charge. This unique architecture allowed the material to act simultaneously as a solar energy harvester and a supercapacitor electrode.

When tested, the NiCo2O4 electrode exhibited a remarkable 54% increase in capacitance under illumination, rising from 570 to 880 mF cm-2 at a current density of 15 mA cm-2. This exceptional performance stems from the efficient generation and transfer of light-induced charge carriers within the nanowire network. Even after 10,000 charge-discharge cycles, the electrode retained 85% of its original capacity, demonstrating its long-term stability, an essential feature for practical applications.

To evaluate its real-world applicability, the researchers prepared an asymmetric photo-supercapacitor using activated carbon as the negative electrode and NiCo2O4 nanowires as the positive electrode. The device delivered a stable output voltage of 1.2 volts, maintained 88% of its capacitance retention even after 1,000 photo-charging cycles, and operated efficiently under varying sunlight conditions-from low indoor illumination to intense 2 sun intensity. This stability indicates that the nanowire structure can endure both mechanical and electrochemical stress over extended periods of use.

By integrating sunlight harvesting and energy storage in a single device, the team developed self-charging power systems that can function anywhere even in remote regions without access to an electrical grid.

Such technology can substantially reduce dependence on fossil fuels and conventional batteries, paving the way for a sustainable and green energy future. In addition to the experimental, theoretical study was carried out to understand why the NiCo2O4 nanowire system performs so efficiently.

This study revealed that nickel substitution in the cobalt oxide framework narrows the band gap to approximately 1.67 eV and induces half metallic behavior. This means the material behaves as a semiconductor for one type of electron spin while remaining metallic for the other: a rare dual property that enables faster charge transport and higher electrical conductivity. Such spin dependent conductivity is particularly valuable for photo-assisted charge storage applications.

Integrating sunlight capture and charge storage in a single architecture has been a long-standing goal in sustainable energy research.

This study also demonstrates the synergy between experimental and theoretical insights in materials research. While experiments confirmed enhanced capacitance and durability, theoretical simulations revealed the atomic-level mechanisms driving these improvements. Together, they provide a comprehensive understanding of how nanostructured materials can be optimized for light-responsive energy storage.

This work, published in Sustainable Energy & Fuels (Royal Society of Chemistry Journal), introduces a new class of smart, photo-rechargeable energy storage devices. Overall, this research represents a paradigm shift in renewable energy storage. With further development, such systems could play a pivotal role in achieving India’s clean energy ambitions and inspiring similar innovations worldwide.

The announcement that WEX, a major US fleet card provider, can finally combine gasoline and public EV charging into one card, one account, and one invoice lands as a small milestone that only looks novel if the frame of reference is strictly American. For US fleet operators, this closes a ... [continued]

The post Why a New US Fleet Payment “First” Is Routine in Europe & China appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Electric vehicles are ‘batteries on wheels’ and have capabilities beyond transportation. Because of the recent frigid weather and snow, someone mentioned the fact that a Ford Lightning can be used as backup power during an outage. Of course, it isn’t only Lightnings that can provide such backup power. Potentially, any ... [continued]

The post Active Managed EV Charging Can Double EV Hosting Capacity appeared first on CleanTechnica.

According to a new report from Paren, about 18,000 new fast EV chargers were installed in the US in 2025. “U.S. fast-charging networks expanded meaningfully in 2025, adding approximately 18,000 new DC fast-charging ports, a ~30% year-over-year increase. Deployment increasingly favored larger, higher-capacity stations, reflecting a continued shift toward sites ... [continued]

The post 18,000 New Fast EV Chargers Were Installed In The US In 2025 appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Nearly a decade ago, I gave a presentation at EVBox’s rEVolution conference in Amsterdam. One of the other presenters at the even was the head of The Mobility House, founder and then-CEO Thomas Raffeiner. The company’s focus: vehicle-to-grid technology. It was clear he and The Mobility House had been working ... [continued]

The post Transforming EVs & Charging Stations into Virtual Power Plants appeared first on CleanTechnica.

The announcement that WEX, a major US fleet card provider, can finally combine gasoline and public EV charging into one card, one account, and one invoice lands as a small milestone that only looks novel if the frame of reference is strictly American. For US fleet operators, this closes a ... [continued]

The post Why a New US Fleet Payment “First” Is Routine in Europe & China appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Electric vehicles are ‘batteries on wheels’ and have capabilities beyond transportation. Because of the recent frigid weather and snow, someone mentioned the fact that a Ford Lightning can be used as backup power during an outage. Of course, it isn’t only Lightnings that can provide such backup power. Potentially, any ... [continued]

The post Active Managed EV Charging Can Double EV Hosting Capacity appeared first on CleanTechnica.

According to a new report from Paren, about 18,000 new fast EV chargers were installed in the US in 2025. “U.S. fast-charging networks expanded meaningfully in 2025, adding approximately 18,000 new DC fast-charging ports, a ~30% year-over-year increase. Deployment increasingly favored larger, higher-capacity stations, reflecting a continued shift toward sites ... [continued]

The post 18,000 New Fast EV Chargers Were Installed In The US In 2025 appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Nearly a decade ago, I gave a presentation at EVBox’s rEVolution conference in Amsterdam. One of the other presenters at the even was the head of The Mobility House, founder and then-CEO Thomas Raffeiner. The company’s focus: vehicle-to-grid technology. It was clear he and The Mobility House had been working ... [continued]

The post Transforming EVs & Charging Stations into Virtual Power Plants appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Tesla's truck charging rollout begins with 1.2 MW chargers to be installed in the coming months under a new partnership.

The post Tesla to roll out 1.2 MW Semi Superchargers at dozens of truck stops appeared first on The Driven.

BYD's next flagship EV with 1,000 kW charging and a quick acceleration time spotted testing ahead of imminent launch.

The post BYD’s new flagship electric SUV spotted testing 1,000 kW charging speeds appeared first on The Driven.

Charging an EV at home doesn’t seem like an inconvenience—until you find yourself dragging a cord around a garage or down a rainy driveway, then unplugging and coiling it back up every time you drive the kids to school or run an errand. For elderly or disabled drivers, those bulky cords can be a physical challenge.

As it was for smartphones years ago, wireless EV charging has been the dream. But there’s a difference of nearly four orders of magnitude between the roughly 14 watt-hours of a typical smartphone battery and that of a large EV. That’s what makes the wireless charging on the 108-kilowatt-hour pack in the forthcoming Porsche Cayenne Electric so notable.

To offer the first inductive charger on a production car, Porsche had to overcome both technical and practical challenges—such as how to protect a beloved housecat prowling below your car. The German automaker demonstrated the system at September’s IAA Mobility show in Munich.

With its 800-volt architecture, the Cayenne Electric can charge at up to 400 kW at a public DC station, enough to fill its pack from 10 to 80 percent in about 16 minutes. The wireless system delivers about 11 kW for Level 2 charging at home, where Porsche says three out of four of its customers do nearly all their fill-ups. Pull the Cayenne into a garage and align it over a floor-mounted plate, and the SUV will charge from 10 to 80 percent in about 7.5 hours. No plugs, tangled cords, or dirty hands. Porsche will offer a single-phase, 48-ampere version for the United States after buyers see their first Cayennes in mid-2026, and a three-phase, 16-A system in Europe.

Porsche’s Wireless Charging is Based on an Old Concept

The concept of inductive charging has been around for more than a century. Two coils of copper wire are positioned near one another. A current flowing through one coil creates a magnetic field, which induces voltage in the second coil.

In the Porsche system, the floor-mounted pad, 78 centimeters wide, plugs into the home’s electrical panel. Inside the pad, which weighs 50 kilograms, grid electricity (at 60 hertz in the United States, 50 Hz in most of the rest of the world) is converted to DC and then to high-frequency AC at 2,000 V.The resulting 85-kilohertz magnetic field extends from the pad to the Cayenne, where it is converted again to DC voltage.

The waterproof pad can also be placed outdoors, and the company says it’s unaffected by leaves, snow, and the like. In fact, the air-cooled pad can get warm enough to melt any snow, reaching temperatures as high as 50 °C.

The Cayenne’s onboard charging hardware mounts between its front electric motor and battery. The 15-kg induction unit wires directly into the battery.

In most EVs, plug-in (conductive) AC charging tops out at around 95 percent efficiency. Porsche says its wireless system delivers 90 percent efficiency, despite an air gap of roughly 12 to 18 cm between the pad and vehicle.

Last year, Oak Ridge National Laboratory transferred an impressive 270 kilowatts to a Porsche Taycan with 95 percent efficiency.

“We’re super proud that we’re just below conductive AC in charging efficiency,” says Simon Schulze, Porsche’s product manager for charging hardware. Porsche also beats inductive phone chargers, which typically max out at about 70 percent efficiency, Schulze says.

When the car gets within 7.5 meters of the charging pad, the Cayenne’s screen-based parking-assist system turns on automatically. Then comes a kind of video game that requires the driver to align a pair of green circles on-screen, one representing the car, the other the pad. It’s like a digital version of the tennis ball some people hang in their garage to gauge parking distance. There’s ample wiggle room, with tolerances of 20 cm left to right, and 15 cm fore and aft. “You can’t miss it,” according to Schulze.

Induction loops detect any objects between the charging plate and the vehicle; such objects, if they’re metal, could heat up dangerously. Radar sensors detect any living things near the pad, and will halt the charging if necessary. People can walk near the car or hop aboard without affecting a charging session.

Christian Holler, Porsche’s head of charging systems, says the system conforms to International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection standards for electromagnetic radiation. The field remains below 15 microteslas, so it’s safe for people with pacemakers, Porsche insists. And the aforementioned cat wouldn’t be harmed even if it strayed into the magnetic field, though “its metal collar might get warm,” Schulze says.

The Porsche system’s 90 percent efficiency is impressive but not record-setting. Last year, Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) transferred 270 kW to a Porsche Taycan with 95 percent efficiency, boosting its state of charge by 50 percent in 10 minutes. That world-record wireless rate relied on polyphase windings for coils, part of a U.S. Department of Energy project that was backed by Volkswagen, Porsche’s parent company.

That effort, Holler says, spawned a Ph.D. paper from VW engineer Andrew Foote. Yet the project had different goals from the one that led to the Cayenne charging system. ORNL was focused on maximum power transfer, regardless of cost, production feasibility, or reliability, he says.

By contrast, designing a system for showroom cars “requires a completely different level of quality and processes,” Holler says.

High Cost Could Limit Adoption

Cayenne buyers in Europe will pay around €7,000 (roughly US $8,100) for the optional charger. Porsche has yet to price it for the United States.

Loren McDonald, chief executive of Chargeonomics, an EV-charging analysis firm, said wireless charging “is clearly the future,” with use cases such as driverless robotaxis, curbside charging, or at any site “where charging cables might be an annoyance or even a safety issue.”

But for now, inductive charging’s costly, low-volume status will limit it to niche models and high-income adopters, McDonald says. Public adoption will be critical “so that drivers can convenience-charge throughout their driving day—which then increases the benefits of spending more money on the system.”

Porsche acknowledges that issue; the system conforms to wireless standards set by the Society of Automotive Engineers so that other automakers might help popularize the technology.

“We didn’t want this to be proprietary, a Porsche-only solution,” Schulze says. “We only benefit if other brands use it.”

Fast, direct-current charging can charge an EV’s battery from about 20 percent to 80 percent in 20 minutes. That’s not bad, but it’s still about six times as long as it takes to fill the tank of an ordinary petrol-powered vehicle.

One of the major bottlenecks to even faster charging is cooling, specifically uneven cooling inside big EV battery packs as the pack is charged. Hydrohertz, a British startup launched by former motorsport and power-electronics engineers, says it has a solution: fire liquid coolant exactly where it’s needed during charging. Its solution, announced in November, is a rotary coolant router that fires coolant exactly where temperatures spike, and within milliseconds—far faster than any single-loop system can react. In laboratory tests, this cooling tech allowed an EV battery to safely charge in less than half the time than was possible with conventional cooling architecture.

A Smarter Way to Move Coolant

Hydrohertz calls its solution Dectravalve. It looks like a simple manifold, but it contains two concentric cylinders and a stepper motor to direct coolant to as many as four zones within the battery pack. It’s installed in between the pack’s cold plates, which are designed to efficiently remove heat from the battery cells through physical contact, and the main coolant supply loop, replacing a tangle of valves, brackets, sensors, and hoses.

To keep costs low, Hydrohertz designed Dectravalve to be produced with off-the-shelf materials, and seals, as well as dimensional tolerances that can be met with the fabrication tools used by many major parts suppliers. Keeping things simple and comparatively cheap could improve Dectravalve’s chances of catching on with automakers and suppliers notorious for frugality. “Thermal management is trending toward simplicity and ultralow cost,” says Chao-Yang Wang, a mechanical and chemical engineering professor at Pennsylvania State University whose research areas include dealing with issues related to internal fluids in batteries and fuel cells. Automakers would prefer passive cooling, he notes—but not if it slows fast charging. So, at least for now, Intelligent control is essential.

“If Dectravalve works as advertised, I’d expect to see a roughly 20 percent improvement in battery longevity, which is a lot.”–Anna Stefanopoulou, University of Michigan

Hydrohertz built Dectravalve to work with ordinary water-glycol, otherwise known as antifreeze, keeping integration simple. Using generic antifreeze avoids a step in the validation process where a supplier or EV manufacturer would otherwise have to establish whether some special formulation is compatible with the rest of the cooling system and doesn’t cause unforeseen complications. And because one Dectravalve can replace the multiple valves and plumbing assemblies of a conventional cooling system, it lowers the parts count, reduces leak points, and cuts warranty risk, Hydrohertz founder and CTO Martyn Talbot claims. The tighter thermal control also lets automakers shrink oversize pumps, hoses, and heat exchangers, improving both cost and vehicle packaging.

The valve reads battery-pack temperatures several times per second and shifts coolant flow instantly. If a high-load event—like a fast charge—is coming, it prepositions itself so more coolant is apportioned to known hot spots before the temperature rises in them.

Multizone control can also speed warm-up to prevent the battery degradation that comes from charging at frigid temperatures. “You can send warming fluid to heat half the pack fast so it can safely start taking load,” says Anna Stefanopoulou, a professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Michigan who specializes in control systems, energy, and transportation technologies. That half can begin accepting load, while the system begins warming the rest of the pack more gradually, she explains. But Dectravalve’s main function remains cooling fast-heating troublesome cells so they don’t slow charging.

Quick response to temperature changes inside the battery doesn’t increase the cooling capacity, but it leverages existing hardware far more efficiently. “Control the coolant with more precision and you get more performance for free,” says Talbot.

Charge Times Can Be Cut By 60 Percent

In early 2025, the Dectravalve underwent bench testing conducted by the Warwick Manufacturing Group (WMG), a multidisciplinary research center at the University of Warwick, in Coventry, England, that works with transport companies to improve the manufacturability of battery systems and other technologies. WMG compared Dectravalve’s cooling performance with that of a conventional single-loop cooling system using the same 100-kilowatt-hour battery pack. During fast-charge trials from 10 percent to 80 percent, Dectravalve held peak cell temperature below 44.5 °C and kept cell-to-cell temperature variation to just below 3 °C without intervention from the battery management system. Similar thermal performance for the single-loop system was made possible only by dialing back the amount of power the battery would accept—the very tapering that keeps fast charging from being on par with gasoline fill-ups.

Keeping the cell temperatures below 50 °C was key, because above that temperature lithium plating begins. The battery suffers irreversible damage when lithium starts coating the surface of the anode—the part of the battery where electrical charge is stored during charging—instead of filling its internal network of pores the way water does when it’s absorbed by a sponge. Plating greatly diminishes the battery’s charge-storage capacity. Letting the battery get too hot can also cause the electrolyte to break down. The result is inhibited flow of ions between the electrodes. And reduced flow within the battery means reduced flow in the external circuit, which powers the vehicle’s motors.

Because the Dectravalve kept temperatures low and uniform—and the battery management system didn’t need to play energy traffic cop and slow charging to a crawl to avoid overheating—charging time was cut by roughly 60 percent. With Dectravalve, the battery reached 80 percent state of charge in between 10 and 13 minutes, versus 30 minutes with the single-cooling-loop setup, according to Hydrohertz.

When Batteries Keep Cool, They Live Longer

Using Warwick’s temperature data, Hydrohertz applied standard degradation models and found that cooler, more uniform packs last longer. Stefanopoulou estimates that if Dectravalve works as claimed, it could boost battery life by roughly 20 percent. “That’s a lot,” she says.

Still, it could be years before the system shows up on new EVs, if ever. Automakers will need years of cycle testing, crash trials, and cost studies before signing off on a new coolant architecture. Hydrohertz says several EV makers and battery suppliers have begun validation programs, and CTO Talbot expects licensing deals to ramp up as results come in. But even in a best-case scenario, Dectravalve won’t be keeping production-model EV batteries cool for at least three model years.

In Menifee, Calif., six newly built homes are testing a first for North America: electric vehicles that can power houses through the Combined Charging System (CCS) high-power DC charging standard. Each home uses a host Kia EV9 electric vehicle connected to a Wallbox Quasar 2 bidirectional charger, allowing the car’s 100-kilowatt-hour (kWh) battery to run essential circuits during blackouts or periods when electricity prices are high. The setup is the first residential vehicle-to-home (V2H) system in the United States that uses the CCS standard. The CCS is the charging system commonly used in European and North American residential and public charging facilities.

Since July, the homes’ smart electrical panels have automatically managed two-way power flow—charging vehicles from the grid or rooftop solar, then reversing the flow of energy when needed. The system isolates each home from the grid during an outage, preventing any current from flowing into external power lines and endangering utility crews and nearby equipment.

“This project is demonstrating that bidirectional charging with CCS can work in occupied homes,” says Scott Samuelsen, founding director of the Advanced Power and Energy Program (APEP) at the University of California, Irvine, which is monitoring the two-year trial. “It’s a step toward vehicles that not only move people but also strengthen the energy system.”

Menifee means a lot

For more than a decade, two-way charging has been available—but mostly restricted to Japan. Back in 2012 the Nissan’s LEAF-to-Home program proved the idea viable after the Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, but that Nissan system relied on the CHAdeMO standard, little used outside of Japan. Most North American and European manufacturers chose CCS instead—a standard that, until recently, supported only one-way fast DC charging.

That distinction makes Menifee’s V2H-enabled neighborhood notable: It’s the first CCS-based V2H deployment in occupied homes, giving researchers real-world field data on a technology that’s been long trapped in pilot programs. The pairing of the Kia EV9 SUV with Wallbox’s commercially available Quasar 2 can deliver up to 12 kilowatts of power from the vehicle to the home.

It’s a step toward vehicles that not only move people, but also strengthen the energy system.”
–Scott Samuelsen, UC Irvine

Elsewhere, momentum toward commercial V2H has slowed. Ford’s F-150 Lightning supports home backup through Sunrun, but Sunrun equipment is not CCS-compatible. What’s more, Ford has announced a production pause for the pickup truck, which has delayed expansion. GM’s Ultium Home—a V2H system that works with the automaker’s Cadillac Lyriq, Cadillac Escalade IQ, Chevrolet Blazer, Chevrolet Equinox, Chevrolet Silverado, and GMC Sierra EVs— faces similar setbacks. Tesla’s PowerShare V2H feature is still stuck in a limited, early commercial rollout, with bidirectional compatibility restricted to the company’s Cybertruck. Menifee, by contrast, is producing operational data in real households.

Why CCS Matters

When electric vehicles first hit the market, CCS was designed for one job: to move power quickly from the grid to the car. The main goal was reliable, standardized, fast charging. That fact helps explain the difference between CCS public chargers (many of which are rated for 350 kW or more) and their CHAdeMO-based counterparts, which typically max out at 100 kW (but are capable of providing home backup or grid services).

Bidirectional operation wasn’t included in the original CCS standard for several reasons. Early automakers and utilities worried about safety risks, grid interference, and added hardware cost. So CCS’s original communication protocol linking EVs and charging stations—ISO 15118—didn’t even include an electronic handshake for power export. The 2022 update, ISO 15118-20, added secure two-way communication, enabling CCS vehicles to supply energy to buildings and the grid.

Wallbox’s Quasar 2 residential charger implements the update through an active-bridge converter circuit built with silicon-carbide transistors, achieving efficient bidirectional flow. Its 12-kW power rating can support typical critical loads in a house, such as heating and cooling, refrigeration, and networking, says Aleix Maixé Sas, a system electronics architect at Wallbox.

As the company’s name humbly suggests, Wallbox’s chargers look like plain old boxes—although they contain high-tech components.Wallbox

The Menifee blueprint

Each of the Menifee homes outfitted with a V2H system combines a rooftop solar array with a 13-kWh SunVault stationary battery from SunPower. During normal operation, solar energy powers daily household loads and charges the stationary battery. On abundantly sunny days, the solar panels can also top up the Kia EV9’s battery. When the grid fails—or when energy prices spike—the home isolates itself: Solar power and energy stored in the SunVault keep essential systems and appliances going, while the EV battery extends power if the outage persists.

This past summer, the UC Irvine researchers tracked how solar output, stationary storage, and vehicle power interacted under summer demand and wildfire-related grid stress. They found that “the vehicle adds a major resilience feature,” according to Samuelsen, who is the Menifee project manager. “It can relieve grid strain, increase renewable utilization, and lower costs by supplying power during peak-rate hours.”

Engineering the Two-Way Home

Home builders and the makers of electric vehicle service equipment such as Wallbox are not the only entities reconsidering how to meet the engineering demands V2H introduces. Utilities, too, must make changes to accommodate bidirectional power flow. Interconnection procedures and energy pricing structures are among the factors that must be redesigned or reconsidered.

A Glimpse of the Energy Future

Analysts expect double-digit annual growth in bidirectional-charging system sales through the late 2020s as costs fall and standards mature. In regions facing wildfire- or storm-related outages and steep time-of-use pricing curves, projects like Menifee’s are showing a clear path toward the use of cars as huge and flexible energy reserves.

When EV batteries can supply energy for homes as easily as they do for propulsion, the boundary between transportation and energy will begin to disappear—and with it, old concepts regarding who’s an energy supplier and who’s a customer.

As a young SpaceX engineer, Quincy Lee led a rollout of hundreds of terrestrial antennas for Elon Musk’s Starlink Internet service. The project covered three continents, took just 24 months, and turned out to be great preparation for Lee’s next chapter.

Lee, now the founder and CEO of Electric Era, wants to make EV charging faster, ubiquitous, and more affordable for drivers and for retailers looking to lure customers and still turn a profit on electricity. As part of that, the company today announced its second-generation RetailEdge chargers. The sleek DC chargers can deliver up to 400 kilowatts, on par with the most powerful public chargers in the United States. But for the Seattle-based company, the real innovation is stationary power storage, something you won’t find at any charger from top players such as Tesla, Electrify America, or Ionna.

The RetailEdge stations can amass 370 kilowatt-hours of storage for a station with eight customer stalls. Taking a page from Starlink satellites, the chargers include software to let chargers self-identify and fix faults remotely. Backed by a box full of prismatic LFP batteries, sourced from China, the company’s chargers can deliver roughly four times as much power as what’s actually being supplied by the grid itself. Lee calls that a potential game changer for an aging, overmatched electrical grid that was not built for a world in which millions of drivers would demand access to industrial-level juice.

“A simple way to think about it is, a typical charging station consumes 1,000 homes’ worth of power on a city block. We can take that down to about 300 homes,” Lee says, while still delivering charging speeds that rival the industry’s best.

Efficient EV Charging Transformers

EV drivers have seen the hulking green transformer boxes that supply stations, including ones with roughly 1,000 kilovolt-amperes, the unit that describes a system’s total electrical power. In contrast, Electric Era stations use smaller, circular transformers—think the ones hung from telephone poles in residential neighborhoods—that can cost as little as US $16,000 (those beefier units can cost up to $100,000). That makes for faster permitting and grid upgrades, a potential end run around construction snafus that can delay DC projects, with some taking more than two years to complete

“The transformers are cheaper, easier to source, and take up less space,” Lee says. “We can swap larger pieces of power-conversion equipment for smaller ones, and still serve up to 140 charging sessions a day for our midsized stations.”

With nearly 120 of its first-generation, 200-kW DC chargers currently in the ground for customers including Costco and Shell, Electric Era says it can decrease installation times and costs by roughly a factor of four. Projects are moving from contract to completion in six to nine months on average, and some in as little as two to three months.

For its midsize stations with four charging stalls, the company needs only 370 kVA of installed capacity, about one-third that of some typical DC stations. (The kVa figure describes total apparent power, the product of a circuit’s maximum voltage and current.) The rest is supplied by 220 kWh of stationary battery storage, barely more than the 205 kWh found in a Cadillac Escalade IQ or GMC Hummer EV.

As drivers plug in, the system automatically balances power between grid and battery supplies. EVs get all the juice they can handle, with stations able to operate 24/7 without any significant curtailment of power.

“Most EVs are only accepting peak power for a few minutes, so we can then use intelligent load management to service another car, and power all the cars at the right time,” Lee says.

Electricity becomes dramatically cheaper as well. Utility customers pay for both electricity they actually use, and the infrastructure wiring that guarantees a ready supply at peak demand. The latter results in “demand charges” that are a notorious obstacle to a profitable, sustainable EV charging business. The higher the ultimate capacity, the higher the charges, even when no car is actually filling up.

“That makes the economics much easier to pencil,” Lee says. “Our customers’ electricity charges are about 50 percent lower, because of demand-charge savings.”

AI-Driven Cost Savings for EV Stations

The company says its system, backed by an AI platform and an intuitive, voice-based screen assistant that can operate in multiple languages, can reduce retail operator costs by up to 70 percent. And that can translate to more reasonable prices for drivers, Lee says. A 2024 Harvard Business School study of EV charging that analyzed 1 million consumer reviews of charging experiences around the United States showed that “Wild West” pricing, and a lack of pricing transparency, are major sources of frustration for drivers.

Or don’t ask Harvard: At many Electrify America stations, such as one near me in Providence, R.I., drivers pay up to 64 cents per kilowatt-hour. The cost of convenience is daunting: According to an EV calculator, at those prices, a driver would spend roughly $3,000 a year for enough juice to cover 15,000 miles in a Hyundai Ioniq 5 SUV. At current prices for regular unleaded, a driver would spend only $1,600 to drive the same distance in a model that gets 30 miles per gallon (about 13 kilometers per liter).

At Electric Era stations, where retailers set their own prices, customers pay about 45 cents per kilowatt-hour on average, about one-third less than many EA stations.

As EVs proliferate, more retailers are seeing the long-predicted upside of luring customers with electricity. A captive charging audience will hopefully spend money at the business, whether it’s a gas station, convenience store, restaurant, or shopping mall.

“For years, that didn’t work, because there were too few EVs on the road,” Lee says. “But the calculus is shifting, and retailers are putting real estate aside (for chargers).”

The company claims a 99.8 percent uptime, and a 93 percent reliability rate, meaning 7 percent of people who plug in fail to get a charge for any reason, from payment glitches to user error. The same Harvard study posted a troubling 78 percent reliability score for public charging, meaning about one in five charging attempts ended in failure.

As Lee says, “One of the things we learned at SpaceX is that you can’t send a repair truck to space, and we’ve adopted the same methodology.”

Tesla opens initial 500 kW+ EV charging sites, paving the way for cheaper EV charging with faster speeds.

The post Tesla opens its first 500 kW supercharger site, doubling power appeared first on The Driven.

Of course, we who follow electric vehicles know China is the world’s largest EV manufacturer. It’s also clear there are many affordable Chinese EVs — much more affordable than in some other countries. There might be less clarity about how much China is also leading in the number of EV ... [continued]

The post Over 20 Million EV Chargers Operating In China Now appeared first on CleanTechnica.

In recent days, those of us who follow public EV charger installations have seen some encouraging news. In particular, mainstream retailers such as Walmart and Kroger stores will install thousands of EV fast chargers. Having more public fast chargers available at popular retail sites means EV drivers can charge while ... [continued]

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ChargePoint (NYSE: CHPT), a global leader in electric vehicle (EV) charging solutions, today announced that the company is enabling Midwestern Wheels, a licensee of Avis Budget Group, to deliver reliable EV charging to its rental car customers and those living in their local communities. New public charging deployments at Midwestern Wheels’ ... [continued]

The post ChargePoint & Midwestern Wheels Deliver Seamless EV Charging for Wisconsin Communities appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Many European countries will get new 400 kW public EV chargers by 2028. They are Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia, Croatia, Czechia, and Estonia. Over 250 fast-charging hubs will be installed at major shopping and commercial centers and each hub will have as many as 12 charging ports. The total ... [continued]

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