future matters on AC charging: Foundation of the global charging infrastructure

An important trend by 2030 is smart charging technologies that can not only be integrated into the local energy management of buildings but also intelligently coordinate charging across networks, making grid-friendly charging the standard.

Charging will still mostly occur at home or work locations in the future

In the future, more than 70% of the charging processes for electric cars will take place either at home or at work locations. Charging capacities of 3.7 to 22 kW will be sufficient for this. AC charging will form the foundation. With an increasing vehicle fleet size, better distribution of the production capacities of renewable energy sources is necessary to bridge peak loads and generate as little CO₂ emissions as possible. To regulate this effectively, energy producers will introduce variable tariffs based on the availability of renewable energies, which can vary significantly throughout the day and week. Cost steering will lead to an optimized balancing of supply and demand, ultimately bringing e-vehicles, stationary energy storage, and heat pumps into grid-friendly operation.

At the center of this development are smart charging technologies, i.e., charging stations that communicate with the energy grid and the energy producer, and coordinate timing and charging power with the electric car. This holds significant cost-saving potential. Avoiding expensive peak loads can save more than 50% compared to regular uniform electricity tariffs – a benefit for both private households and businesses. Additionally, intelligent charging technologies enable integration with solar systems, making self-consumption charging highly affordable.

Intelligent load management will become more important

With the increasing number of electric cars in shared garages, depots, parking garages, company parking lots, and rental car stations, simple, intelligent, spontaneous, and secure load management will be one of the core elements of the next generation of mobile and stationary charging devices. However, it won't suffice to achieve this through a “load shedding” via a ripple control signal or a simple reduction in charging power. Instead, it requires intelligent algorithms that consider user requirements, the charging status of vehicles, and other factors such as electricity producers' daily prices and vehicle usage profiles, optimizing based on pattern recognition and substantiated data.

DC versus AC - both will come, but used differently

Direct current (DC) charging technology will be particularly suitable for fast charging on the go with charge times of less than 15 minutes for an increase in range of 300 km. However, it won't benefit as much from the variable and significantly lower prices as AC charging will. This means that from now on, (intelligent) AC solutions will gain even more importance and become the key technology for base charging, whereas DC charging will only be used for top-up charging. Additionally, the battery capacities of e-cars will continuously increase, resulting in less frequent need for recharging on the go.

What does this mean?

Unlike refueling, charging will develop differently: expensive and complex DC charging will remain a niche for quick top-ups. AC charging will continue to dominate but become smarter than ever.