7 M BY MARK KANE
Modern DC fast charger needs to be modular and upgradable
Bjørn Nyland recently took the opportunity at the Norwegian EV summit to check the inside of Fortum‘s ultra-fast charger, produced by Italian company Hypercharger.
Those new devices are getting better and better over time. Ten years ago we saw only simple 50 kW CHAdeMO DC fast chargers, mostly in Japan, but now the power output increased, the chargers are modular and configurable, multi-standard with power sharing between the outputs, and of course connected to the wide networks.
In the case of the presented Hypercharger, the architecture enables it to have up to 4 power electronics modules (87.5 kW each) and up to 4 outputs. Each module can charge one vehicle (simultaneously up to 4 cars) or multiple modules can be utilized for charging a single car at higher power (up to 350 kW).
The particular Hypercharger presented at the show was equipped with two modules and two CCS plugs, one of which was liquid cooled. In theory, a car like the Audi e-tron could charge at 150 kW using two modules, and when the power demand will decrease at higher state-of-charge, one module will be released to eventually charge the second car (if connected).
Depending on the needs, chargers can be upgraded/modified in the future, which also makes great sense for charging network operators.