Charging Station standards

Electric car makers and power companies are to unveil this week a standard Europe-wide power plug to recharge the batteries of electric vehicles, the German newspaper Die Welt reported Sunday. The agreement avoids the plug-and-socket problems familiar to travellers who take small appliances such as hair-dryers abroad.
It will be announced at the five-day Hanover Fair, a big annual expo of industrial products which opens for business on Monday in Germany. Die Welt said the standard had been agreed by 20 big companies.

The connectors were designed for a 400-volt power supply with up to 63 amperes of current.

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This new Yazaki coupler will, however, be able to deliver much more than the former Level II power limit (6.6 kW), perhaps as much as 16-19 kW. This medium power capability is necessary in order to obtain reasonable charge times with upcoming long-range BEVs. Tesla Motors will be shipping their Roadster in 2008 with a 52 kWhr battery. With the former Level II charge limits of 6.6 kW, charge times for a 52 kWhr battery would become unreasonably long, perhaps as much as 7-8 hours. This charge time duration would extend beyond preferred late-evening low-cost Utility rate schedules, while a medium-power 3-4 hour charge could be scheduled to “fit” better into these upcoming schedules.
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It is assumed that high power capable EVs (50+ kW) would now make use of a separate on-vehicle higher-power inlet standard that is yet to be developed. Overall, the attractiveness of all PHEVs and BEVs making use of an consistent, almost worldwide J1772-Yazaki-based low-to-medium power connection standard more than outweighs the loss of potential high power capability with the former Avcon connector. The need for and attractiveness of higher “fast charge” power capability for EVs is not yet proven to be necessary to market BEVs...​

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Kevin Harney said:

400 V & 63A - will that fit the build of the Model S quick charger ? Does that mean it is DC ? Will the Roadsters be retrofitted or retrofitable ? Is TM on board with this decision ?

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doug said:

I'm curious what the signal protocol is for the SAE connector. Seems like something more for IEEE rather than SAE.

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...The control box sends a 1 kHz 12 volt square wave through a 1000 ohm resistor
to the pilot pin. The duty cycle of the square wave is set to indicate how much current can be supplied
from the AC mains. In the AVCON box the duty cycle is fixed at 50% indicating that 30 Amps (RMS) is
available. Therefore the circuit must supply at least 30 Amps since some chargers measure the square
wave to determine how much current they can draw. An outlet which can only supply 20 amps will have
a square wave with a smaller duty cycle and one which can supply more a larger one. The return current
from the pilot pin is through a resistor and a diode in the EV to frame ground. If the frame ground
connection is ever broken the box will immediately open the contactor...

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...The alliance of more than 20 leading European suppliers and auto companies are working together on laying the foundation for widespread introduction of electric cars...
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As Better Place was not invited to join this alliance it seems to be a strong competition at least in Europe.
I still hope that the alliance will work together with Better Place and not against.
But my concern is that the big corporations involved want to takeover the business model of providing mobility.
And as these big corporations first want to secure their business the alliance might become another
oligopoly in this area (like the opec countries) and this is for sure not the best for the consumer...

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e-mobility Berlin / MINI-E-Berlin...both projects will use the CEEplus system...

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• [FONT=&quot]IEC 62196-1 <== e-mobility. 400V 3-phase. Primarily Europe
  [/FONT]
• [FONT=&quot]IEC 62196-2 [/FONT]
• [FONT=&quot]SAE J1772 <== Single phase AC. Primarily USA and Japan
  [/FONT]

The {J1772} connector may also become the standard in Japan, where the SAE and the Japanese standard body are making good cooperation. Although a proposal has been made to incorporate the SAE connector interface in IEC standards although Italy and Germany are proposing alternative connectors. (Design for single-phase power is problematic for countries where 3-phase is also used, notes Cyriacus Bleijs, Chairman IEC TC69.)

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After some name googling on who's who and is involved with the SAE J1772 standards committee for EV charging, I found that Yazaki is giving a report next week to the committe on design considerations. Yazaki make lots of automotive connectors. There is also current discussion on Level 3 fast charging plug designs. They have a very different connector than the old J1772 standard that was popular on the Ford Ranger EV. The ongoing debate within this committee will have impact on the final cordset for charging to be adopted by most OEM automakers. Deliberations apparently are expected to conclude by March 2010. The J1772 committee deliberations are closed discussion, but by looking at who the committee members are and the companies they are with and their backgrounds and interests and other papers published some implications are apparent. It appears that deliberations are far from complete. An attempt at international standardizations is going on. A new plug may be in the works. 220V / 32A is a driver from Europe. It seems all the right players are at the table.
- Don Chandler

• SAE J1772 Meeting agenda

Also the secretarty of the IEC T69 committee Peter Van Den Bossche had these papers of interest on his website:

• Charging Voltages and Power Levels
• On the history of charging
• On defining and developing standards for EV charging
• On EV CHarging Equipment Design

Related current standards:

• IEC TC69
• ISO TC22 SC21 [45]
• SAE J1772
• National Electric Code
• Canadian Electric Code Part 1 Section 86 and Part 2 for chargers.
• UL

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TEG said:

I am not sure what they are doing with "new improved J1772", but some details of the original (somewhat low tech) standard can be found here.

...The control box sends a 1 kHz 12 volt square wave through a 1000 ohm resistor to the pilot pin. The duty cycle of the square wave is set to indicate how much current can be supplied from the AC mains.

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SAE 2009: SAE J1772 plug standard could be finalized by this fall...
...The connector is designed for single phase electrical systems with up to 240 V and 70 A such as those used in North American and Japan....
...This plug is unrelated to the recently announced European plug standard. That plug is designed for 400 V three phase applications.

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...ClipperCreek's products are compatible with the BMW Mini E and The Tesla Roadster and all SAE compatible vehicles coming to market soon, including the Chevy Volt, and the Nissan Cube Minicar. ...

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...the Clipper Creek charge station ... is to be protected by a 60amp feed breaker installed at the main panel. ...

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doug said:

I'm curious what the signal protocol is for the SAE connector.

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... 5.5 Serial Data Transfer - Coupler contact numbers 7, 8, and 9 are provided to allow an exchange of serial data information between the EV and the EVSE based on SAE J1850, SAE J2178, and SAE J2293. The serial data link is mandatory for DC Charging to allow the vehicle to control the charge process. The serial data link is optional for AC Level 2 and AC Level 1 - i.e. for displaying charge related or other information to the user. ...

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• The International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC)
• The International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO)
• Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE)
• Japanese Electric Vehicle Association (JEVA)

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