Outdated technical standards lead to endless hidden dangers of high-power charging

Recently, at the Electric Vehicle Charging Facility Construction and Development Forum of the 2017 China International Clean Energy Expo, high-power charging technology attracted widespread attention.

At present, more than 150,000 charging piles have been built across the country, most of which have a power of about 40 kilowatts. It is understood that in 2017, the country will build another 800,000 charging piles.

How to configure the power of so many charging piles? This has become a major problem facing the electric vehicle industry, because with the advancement of technology, the battery capacity of some electric vehicles continues to increase, and the driving range is also getting longer and longer.

In early March 2017, the first meeting on international standards for high-power charging of electric vehicles was held in the Netherlands, which proposed new requirements for charging power of 350 kW to 500 kW. As early as the end of 2016, Volkswagen, BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Ford, Audi and Porsche jointly announced that they would jointly build super charging stations across Europe, with a power of 350 kW.

Large buses have larger battery capacities and require high-power charging. Since 2017, the charging rate of buses has also been directly linked to the subsidy coefficient. At the same time, the higher the system energy density, the greater the subsidy amount.

It is reported that the battery capacity in the United States and Europe is expected to reach 100 kWh by 2020, and the driving range will reach 500 kilometers, with a charging time of about 15 minutes. Therefore, the charging power is required to be 350 kW to 500 kW.

In summary, market demand, policy guidance and standard setting are all driving the increase of charging power. However, there are still many problems to be solved for high-power charging.

The first is the safety issue. High-power charging piles have high voltage and current, and have very high safety requirements. In early 2017, a certain brand of electric vehicle caught fire while charging. The reasons were: high-power charging caused grid fluctuations; unstable grid voltage affected equipment reliability.

In addition, the mismatch of battery technology restricts the charging speed. For example, many electric buses on the market are equipped with lithium iron phosphate batteries, which have a low charging rate and cannot achieve fast charging.

Of course, the heat dissipation problem of the charging pile cannot be ignored. The heat dissipation system is divided into three parts: the charging pile module, the charging gun and the cable. For high-power charging, the heat dissipation problem of these three parts must be solved. Among them, the cable and cooling system also need to be lightweight and miniaturized.

"The problem of high-power charging in China is due to backward standards," said Sha Yongkang, director of the Hezhong Environmental Protection Energy Technology Research Institute in Changshu, Jiangsu.

Technical standards are the criteria for the development of technology and products. They can seek benefits and avoid harm, and ensure that technology and products meet social needs to the greatest extent possible. Formulating technical standards requires invention and creation, repeated testing and verification, and the accumulation of a large amount of technical data.

In the past, the domestic industry and science and technology community did not attach importance to technical standards, nor intellectual property rights. They blindly introduced and imitated advanced foreign products, and suffered from the lack of voice in the international market. Later, the relevant domestic departments gradually realized the importance of technical standards, but did not know how to formulate technical standards. Therefore, in the process of formulating technical standards, the relevant domestic departments often act too hastily and formulate technical standards without repeated experimental verification and accumulation of technical data. How can the technical standards formulated in this way be called standards? Not only can they not play the role they should, but they are also prone to hidden dangers and even cause huge disasters. The formulation of charging pile standards is a typical case in this regard.

The country has four relevant departments organized to formulate technical standards for charging piles. Without conducting in-depth investigations and research, repeated experimental verifications, accumulating a large amount of technical data, or inventing anything, they took it for granted and decided to copy the European Siemens technical standards.

"The relevant seminars and symposiums did not solve any practical problems." Sha Yongkang once participated in such seminars and symposiums and put forward opinions and suggestions, but they were not welcomed and he felt that they were just for show.

Such hastily "formulated" technical standards are seriously out of touch with reality, posing safety risks to high-power charging and even causing electric vehicle fires. I hope the relevant departments can learn a lesson from this.

Relevant domestic departments should take positive actions, organize special forces, study and solve relevant problems, and eliminate hidden dangers!

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.