Posted by Janet Stroud — April 11, 2023 — Enteligent Inc., developer of solar power optimization and electric vehicle (EV) solar charging technologies that are designed to deliver more of the clean solar energy you generate and dramatically reduce cost, recently unveiled what the company calls the “world’s first” DC-to-DC solar hybrid bidirectional EV charger, at the Intersolar NA 2023 show.
Enteligent’s DC-to-DC solar EV charger enables daytime charging with clean energy. Image courtesy of Enteligent
Beyond providing a sustainable and high-demand amenity for tenants and employees, the installation of Enteligent’s solar EV chargers will help energy users shift their charging habits, says the company. A paper published in March 2022 by a team at Stanford University’s Precourt Institute for Energy examines the stress that increased EV ownership will place on the grid as owners charge at night.
The researchers estimate demand rising by 25% over the next decade, resulting in grid instability and higher energy costs for generating and storing the required capacity to support growing demand. Providing users an option to charge directly from the sun through a charger that does not need to be supported by the electric grid ensures grid and price stability.
Powered directly from the sun, Enteligent’s solar EV charger can supply 25 kW of fast DC charging — reportedly three times faster than AC Level 2 EV chargers — while also supporting vehicle-to-home (V2H) and vehicle-to-grid (V2G) energy resilience and providing significant energy savings.
Currently, EV owners plug their cars into home chargers which are powered by an alternating current (AC) flow of energy generated from the electric grid. But EV batteries operate on a direct current (DC) requiring the power to be converted from AC-to-DC in the charging process. This conversion is inefficient and results in a significant amount of lost energy and a longer charging time, points out Enteligent.
By eliminating the AC-to-DC conversion, Enteligent’s EV chargers help users optimize every kilowatt of precious, clean energy, resulting in up to 25% energy savings. And direct charging DC by-passes the EV’s internal conversion electronics, dramatically improving the time necessary to charge.
Additionally, BloombergNEF forecasts that by the end of this decade 52% of the total car market will be composed of EVs. Today, the vast majority of EVs are charged overnight by a fossil fuel-powered grid. With the dramatically increased number of EVs plugged in at night and with the rapidly growing array of household electronics we rely on daily, this proliferation of required electricity will strain the grid’s ability to reliability meet energy demand.
Enteligent’s proprietary solar EV chargers make it convenient and affordable to charge during the day, direct from convenient on-site solar generation, fostering a fundamental shift in energy consumption habits that leverage solar power when it is locally generated and readily available.
Sean Burke, founder and CEO of Enteligent, stated:
Rapid growth in EV ownership and usage and the resulting demand for energy are putting increased pressure on an already stretched electricity grid. This first-of-its-kind technology will benefit consumers by enabling them to shift from night-time charging, which is dependent on the fossil-fuel powered grid, to clean, solar-based, daytime charging.
Find out more about the DC-to-DC solar hybrid bidirectional EV charger from Enteligent.
Enteligent is a California-based developer of smart solar power optimization and solar EV charging technologies engineered to dramatically increase energy utilization, improve returns on energy investments, and enable critical paradigm shifts in how we use energy for the upcoming green electrification revolution. Enteligent’s NMax photovoltaic module power optimizers use smart digital technology to dynamically adjust when to optimize and provide panel-level monitoring data, resulting in greater rooftop yield, more energy harvesting and higher system reliability.
