Off-Grid Wind and Solar Charging Offers a Sustainable Option for EV Use
A start-up electric vehicle charging company has come up with a unique solution for charging vehicles using wind and solar power. Change Wind is developing the Wind and Solar Tower, a freestanding unit that incorporates both a wind turbine and solar panels along with battery storage to provide grid-free service for electric cars.
The towers, better presented to the world back in March, also offer a solution for charging electric vehicles in rural areas or along major highways to facilitate EV road trips. The company says the Wind and Solar Tower is capable of supporting so-called Level 4 DC charging with a flow rate of 380 kW at up to 1,000 volts. At that level, the system delivers 6.333 kW, roughly 22 miles of range, per minute. That works out to over 300 miles of range in 15 minutes.
While current cars don’t have the systems to accommodate that rate, the company says the new 800-volt architecture of the Porsche Taycan, Audi e-tron, Hyundai Ioniq 5 and Kia EV6 is a step towards being able to charge vehicles at higher and faster rates than current Level 3 technology.
Also, the higher voltage and kW flow would be ideally suited for charging large electric semi-trucks. In the meantime, Wind Change would also be able to offer more traditional Level 2 and 3 charging capability.
Read the rest of the story at autoevolution.com at https://www.autoevolution.com/news/off-grid-wind-and-solar-charging-offers-a-sustainable-option-for-ev-use-188259.html.