A few days ago we reviewed the different implications of urban design and industrial development related to the electric car from the urban perspective and especially in relation to < a href="https://naider.com/blog/manu-fernandez/the-future-of-cities-car-charging-systems-el%C3%A9ctrico" target="_blank" rel ="noopener">recharge systems. And it is that in the race for the electric vehicle one of the main weak points of the competition is the energy sources with which the electricity that will feed the cars will be produced. It could be that, by fleeing the oil-driven economy, we end up in an oil-driven economy by coal or nuclear energy and we have not managed to solve climate change and dependence on non-renewable sources. How to give drink to all those vehicles that are expected to travel on the roads in the coming decades? What to give them to drink?

In promoting this new mobility solution, emphasis has been placed on the vehicle itself and more specifically on the engine and, secondly, on the recharging systems. The third leg is missing: the reliable, stable and sufficient supply of electricity through a network that redimensions the current ones by gradually introducing a greater demand for electricity. And the latter seems to have been more cornered in the research and technological development agenda in recent years.

So I take this opportunity to show here two solutions (there will be more, sure, let’s see if we can find them) that experiment with the use of clean and renewable energy sources to power charging points. On the one hand, the company Beautiful Earth Group has developed a system of recharge via solar energy, which he installed a few months ago in Brooklyn. This is a solution that Toyota is also being developed as of late and will soon be available for installation in Japan. On the other hand, a charging system based on the energy generated by a mini-wind farm, a system developed by Coulomb Technologies.

In Spain they have been Acciona, Indrae Ingeteam the first to place power from renewable sources as a priority through the Project Serves (Intelligent Electric Vehicle Charging System). This project, I understand, tries to use renewable energy in an indirect way, using the electrical mix efficiently and making the most of the potential of electricity from renewable sources. In Noticias de Navarra you can find a good ý simple explanation of the system:

Jon Asín highlights that the differential element of the charging system is its intelligent nature, which allows it not to saturate the network or cause power spikes. “It would not make sense that, if we all put the car to recharge at seven or eight in the evening, we force the thermal power plants to work more and emit more CO2. The paradox would arise that an electric vehicle would be polluting more than a diesel car,” he explains.

Thus, the system developed by Ingeteam, Acciona and Indra would make it possible to make the most of the hours of least consumption -between eleven at night and six in the morning- to recharge the vehicles. These hours would also coincide with those in which the wind farms have accredited a greater generation capacity and which is sometimes wasted. “There are moments, especially on Saturday nights -explains Asín-, in which the demand drops so much that some mills have to be stopped. Our system would allow not only an integration between renewable energies, but also increase the wind power currently installed “.

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Banner photo taken from Beautiful Earth Group.
Photo of Toyota’s solar system taken from DesingBoom.