Industry
Manufacturing
Future-Ready Manufacturing: Partnering in your journey to a sustainable manufacturing enterprise
Highlights
- Global EV adoption continues to rise across markets and the growth is expected to continue despite recent headwinds.
- Home charging is poised to play a significant role in accelerating EV adoption as it addresses a key aspect of the whole equation – consumer experience.
- By addressing range anxiety and lowering the cost of ownership, the home charging option will dramatically improve consumer experience, ultimately supporting the EV adoption agenda and building a sustainable e-mobility model.
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The home charging ecosystem
The adoption of electric vehicles (EV) continues to rise globally given the growing consumer demand for battery electric vehicles (BEVs) and hybrid vehicles in both new and used vehicle segments.
Even as manufacturers navigate the challenges around relatively high production costs, reduction in incentives, and supply chain disruptions, they expect growth to remain on an upward curve.
The growth in home charging, which addresses customers’ range anxiety, is accelerating EV adoption to a mass market segment. Home or private chargers not only offer ease of convenience to consumers but also reduce the cost of ownership owing to various aspects such as preferential energy prices, use of green energy, grid load balancing, and efficient energy demand management. Governments across the European Union, the United Kingdom, and other major markets offer consumer incentives to install home chargers, driving demand even further.
Home charging typically operates at 7 KW power (11/22 KW for 3-phase connections and 1 KW from 220 V wall point sockets). These charge rates do not overheat the battery, thereby extending battery life and contributing to a sustainable battery value chain.
Figure 1 shows how we see the home charging ecosystem is evolving, based on available usage trends, technology shifts, and participants engagement.
Figure 1: A typical home charging ecosystem
Figure 1: A typical home charging ecosystem
Energy suppliers – a critical success factor
Energy suppliers are the backbone of the overall electrification ecosystem and crucial to the industry’s growth momentum.
As the scale expands and load on the grid grows, innovative solutions around load balancing are needed. To ensure the uptake of these solutions, they must offer incentives to consumers to shift energy consumption patterns, such as:
- Time-of-use (ToU) tariffs: This is relatively simple and quite often the first step by energy providers in offering smart charging. It involves offering lower energy tariffs for off-peak hour charging. EV chargers and charging controls offered by EV vehicles can then accordingly set fixed charge schedules.
- Smart charging (V1G) services: Smart charging is all about offering dynamic charge schedules and tariffs which are event based. The charge profile to be applied on an EV charging session is dependent on energy tariffs, battery charge levels – current and desired. Energy suppliers can deliver demand response signals for shifting energy load patterns or alternatively deliver a dynamic charge profile based on specific EV charging needs.
- Bi-directional (V2G/V2L) services: These are advanced patterns that integrate EV batteries as distributed energy resources (DER). It is a relatively complex option and somewhat expensive to implement but has the potential to drive sustainability by utilizing idle battery capacity to power the grid or energy source for home consumption and reducing need to generate additional energy.
- Sustainable charging with green energy sources: This is used by energy suppliers to drive the overall sustainability promise for e-mobility services. Energy suppliers such as Electrify America in the US and Octopus Energy in the UK offer green energy for EV charging as a competitive differentiator.
The role of automotive OEMs
Automotive OEMs are entering the home charging market to enhance the EV ownership experience.
Not only that but this will also help them diversify revenue streams and align with sustainability goals to position themselves as comprehensive mobility solution providers. OEMs are leveraging the home charging proposition to create seamless ecosystems that enhance customer experience, strengthen customer loyalty and differentiate their brands in a competitive market. Here is how they are doing it:
- Strategic partnerships: Many OEMs are partnering with energy providers, installers, and electric vehicle supply equipment (EVSE) manufacturers to scale their offerings and deliver comprehensive home charging solutions. Examples of such partnerships include Volvo – Qmerit – ChargePoint where the OEM has partnered with an installation company and an EVSE manufacturer; and Volkswagen – Ohme – OVO where the OEM has partnered with a EVSE manufacturer and an energy supplier.
- Development of branded chargers: A few OEMs are developing their own home charging propositions to ensure full compatibility with their vehicles. OEM-branded chargers come with advanced features and offer faster charging speeds, while ensuring seamless user experience through a unified vehicle and charging app. Examples of OEMs with branded chargers can be seen with Toyota HomeCharge as well as Tesla Wall Connector.
OEMs aim to provide customers with a reliable, end-to-end home charging solution that addresses customer pain points such as charging convenience while allowing OEMs to leverage charging data for insights and new services, whether through strategic partnerships or the development of their own chargers.
Some innovations in the EV charging domain
Home charging hardware manufacturers are driving innovation with intelligent controls, AI and ML led models, and solar integration.
This sub-domain includes businesses involved in manufacturing home charging hardware, on-board software, and the centralized charge station management platform. They deliver core hardware and software services, building a sustainable home charging infrastructure. Based on AI and ML led predictive models that use customer charging patterns, energy provider signals, and accessibility to renewable energy, a charging platform can build a dynamic charging profile (see Figure 2). It can help balance the charging session on costs, while managing peak grid demand load.
Figure 2: Sample dynamic charging profile
Figure 2: Sample dynamic charging profile
As shown in Figure 2, the charge profile recommendation engine delivers the target state-of-charge (SoC), optimizing the use of low tariff energy, energy transfer to grid (thereby enhancing sustainable energy supply), and consuming green energy when possible.
If a consumer has installed a solar panel, then using current transformer (CT) clamps energy generated by solar panels can be tracked, the information can then be fed to the charge station management platform which can then prioritize use of solar energy leading to enhanced usage of renewable energy and saving on charging costs.
A dynamic profile could lead to cost savings, reducing the cost of ownership by selling energy to the grid and driving sustainable ownership experience.
Third-party value drivers
Third parties play a vital role in the home charging ecosystem by providing value-added services that complement offerings from energy providers, automotive OEMs, and charger manufacturers.
By addressing the gaps between the various stakeholders, third parties contribute to the development of a more complete and robust home charging ecosystem that facilitates the adoption of EVs. Third parties are essential to the home charging ecosystem in the following ways:
- Energy exchange: They enable peer-to-peer energy exchange where homeowners with renewable energy sources such as solar panels can trade surplus energy within decentralized energy networks.
- Cross-selling complimentary products: By positioning complimentary products such as smart meters, solar panels, and battery storage systems along with energy management tools that provide users with insights and control of their energy consumption, third parties offer the opportunity to transform a home EV charging setup into fully integrated smart energy systems.
- Providing end-of-life battery services: Third parties can deliver services in managing the end-of-life processes for EV batteries. For example, companies can provide battery state of health (SOH) certificates and can aid the second life of the battery or facilitate recycling programs.
By offering services and solutions that address energy efficiency, sustainability, and circularity, third parties can help drive sustainable electrification.
Future outlook
The home charging ecosystem is poised for transformation driven by the collaboration between energy suppliers, automotive OEMs, EV charger manufacturers, and key third-party players.
If we talk about the present, enhancing charging infrastructure, meeting grid demand, improving interoperability and standards, addressing EV and home charging adoption issues are blockers to accelerate home charging impact.
Bi-directional chargers are expensive, coupled with consumers’ apprehensions around multiple battery discharge cycles and their impact on battery useful life remain and have impacted grid balancing initiatives using V2G.
With innovations in AI-ML optimized scheduling, improved V2G awareness, and technology scale-out, integrated home charger solutions will provide customers with greater convenience and cost savings, while proving relatively better for the environment. Partnerships among automotive OEMs, energy suppliers, charger manufacturers, and third parties will be critical in overcoming obstacles such as grid demand, interoperability, and increasing adoption among consumers.
