Compared with the development of new energy vehicles, the construction of charging piles is ahead of schedule. At present, the industry is still in the transformation period of technology, market and profit model, and risks and opportunities coexist. How to ride the east wind of "new infrastructure" and walk in the forefront of the eight development trends of charging pile industry has become the key to the development of charging pile enterprises.
High-power DC fast charging is just needed
Developing new energy vehicles is the only way for China to move from a big automobile country to a strong automobile country, and solving the charging problem is the core of the development of China's new energy automobile industry. According to the "New Infrastructure" plan, in 2020, it is planned to add more than 6.5438+0.2 million centralized charging and replacing power stations and 4.8 million decentralized charging piles. By 2025, more than 36,000 charging and replacing power stations will be built, and the national vehicle-pile ratio will reach 1: 1. This will help China to usher in the great development period of new energy vehicles and new energy charging piles in the next 5- 10 years.
Image source: State Grid
However, we should know that the difficulty of charging is not limited to the number and distribution of charging infrastructure, and how to effectively improve charging efficiency is equally important. According to Zhu Yulong, a senior electrification engineer in the automobile industry, "At present, the charging power of DC fast charging piles for domestic electric passenger cars is about 60kW, and the actual charging time is 10%-80%, which is 40 minutes at normal temperature and generally above 1 hour at low temperature".
"With the large-scale application of electric vehicles, users' demand for temporary, emergency and long-distance travel is increasing, and the problems of difficult and slow charging for users have not been fundamentally solved. In this case, high-power DC fast charging technology and products show a key supporting role. "According to Jia, deputy general manager of State Grid Electric Vehicle Service Co., Ltd., high-power charging piles are rigid requirements, which can greatly shorten the charging time and increase the frequency of charging piles.
At present, in order to shorten the charging time, the industry has begun to study the layout of high-power DC charging technology, increasing the charging voltage of passenger cars from 500V to 800V, and supporting the single-gun charging power from 60kW to 350kW and above. This means that the full charging time of pure electric passenger cars can be shortened from 1 hour to 10- 15 minutes, which is closer to the refueling experience of fuel vehicles.
From a technical point of view, a 120kW high-power DC charging pile needs 8 parallel connections if using the 15kW charging module, and only 4 parallel connections if using the 30kW charging module. The less the number of parallel modules, the more stable and reliable the current sharing and control between modules, and the higher the integration of charging pile system, the more cost advantage it has. At present, some enterprises are already conducting research and development in this field.
However, despite this, there are still many practical problems in the charging pile market that need to be solved urgently.
Standardization of core components needs to be unified urgently
Liu Yongdong, director of the Standardization Management Center of China Electric Power Enterprise Federation, pointed out: "From the perspective of equipment manufacturers, the charging facilities market is highly competitive. There is no blue ocean, many participants flock to form the Red Sea, and the phenomenon that bad money drives out good money still exists, resulting in worrying quality of charging equipment. "
According to the latest data of China Electric Vehicle Charging Infrastructure Promotion Alliance, as of June 2020, members of the alliance reported 558,000 public charging piles, including 324,000 AC charging piles, 234,000 DC charging piles and 488 AC /DC integrated charging piles. Among them, the charging infrastructure has different forms, with the characteristics of "many manufacturers", "many product models" and "many parts sizes". As far as charging modules are concerned, the models and sizes of various manufacturers are different and cannot be replaced and compatible with each other. Many charging piles may be forced to be replaced because there are no spare parts, spare parts are too expensive, and manufacturers do not maintain them, thus bringing huge losses to investors and society.
At the same time, the uneven quality of charging piles produced by various enterprises can not be ignored. 2065438+August 2009, Guangdong Institute of Product Quality Supervision and Inspection announced the results of risk monitoring of electric vehicle charging pile products for the first time. The results show that 10 batches of electric vehicle charging piles from 9 manufacturers were collected in this risk monitoring, of which 7 batches did not meet the requirements of the national standard, and the rusting of outdoor charging piles was common, both inside and outside.
At present, charging piles are mostly distributed in outdoor environment, and water leakage and corrosion are the two most important links to be prevented. However, because China's charging pile products are not in CCC compulsory certification catalogue, it is common that the quality of charging pile industry without compulsory standards is uneven, which also brings different degrees of security risks. In addition to water leakage, corrosion and other visible dangers, noise and electromagnetic radiation are often pointed out.
With the rapid growth of new energy vehicles, the charging pile industry in China has entered a new stage with equal emphasis on quality and convenience. With the help of new infrastructure, if the charging pile industry wants to be more stable and better, it must unify the standards of core components such as charging guns and charging modules. While the policy of standardizing charging pile standards continues to be implemented, charging pile enterprises need to refine standards and standardize products in the process of producing accessories, and at the same time ensure that they can meet the current application of pure electric vehicles and support passenger cars with higher charging power and charging voltage in the future.
In addition, in order to push the charging piles closer to residential areas, in addition to the highly unified standards of core components, the suppliers of electric pile accessories also need to improve the quality of modules, mute noise sources and reduce the impact of charging piles on electrical equipment, especially on the human body.
Multi-network integration is an inevitable trend.
From a technical point of view, there are also many problems that need to be improved in the charging pile market. Wang Chao, president of mPower, Huawei's digital energy product line, summed up when expounding the charging pile market: "It is difficult for community owners to build charging piles, and private car owners have doubts about buying electric vehicles; The DC charging pile has a low pile formation rate, which makes it difficult for operating vehicles to charge, and the phenomenon of charging queues during peak hours is common; The layout of charging piles is unreasonable, and it is difficult for car owners to find piles, which coexist with idle charging piles; The charging network is not interconnected, and there is no linkage between piles, resulting in poor charging user experience. "
When new energy vehicles ushered in the first development climax, early entrants ignored the rational layout of products in order to seize the market, and built charging piles in remote areas, which could not meet the charging needs of new energy vehicles, and also caused the charging piles to be idle and the input cost could not be recovered.
Reasonable layout and unified platform have become the problems that must be solved in the promotion and operation of charging piles. Therefore, State Grid, China Southern Power Grid, TELD, Wanbang and other charging pile enterprises jointly established Xiong 'an Lianhang Network Technology Co., Ltd. in xiong'an new area at the end of 20 18, in order to realize the intercommunication of physical interface, service information and transaction settlement, integrate and form a charging network, and provide better service guarantee for new energy vehicle users. In their view, only by strengthening the interconnection between them can we solve the coexistence problems of difficulty in finding piles, poor charging experience and low utilization rate of charging piles, and truly facilitate car owners to "connect electricity".
Image source: State Grid official website
Realizing the interconnection between charging operators is only the first step of the rapid development of charging pile industry. Driven by the new infrastructure represented by informationization, intelligence and digitalization, technologies such as Internet of Things, big data, cloud computing and artificial intelligence are constantly developing. Vehicle-pile connection is no longer just energy supplement, but multi-dimensional security interconnection and data exchange between vehicle enterprises and pile enterprises, thus finally realizing the interactive integration of charging network, vehicle network and even energy network.
Specifically, the charging network refers to the ability to support orderly charging and adopt blockchain and other technologies to support market transactions; Vehicle networking means that people, vehicles and piles can work together to realize the management of cloud BMS. On the other hand, the energy network is based on the synergy of photovoltaic and energy storage in the local distribution network, and has the scheduling and use of VPP virtual power plants to support the frequency modulation and peak shaving of the power grid. Simply put, in the next few years, the charging infrastructure will become a key entrance to the "energy Internet".
Zhang Jiankun, deputy chief engineer of State Grid Corporation, believes that the future development mode of charging pile industry will fully promote the construction of an open intelligent vehicle networking platform, promote cross-industry cooperation and sharing of energy, transportation, automobiles and information, and provide comprehensive platform services for electric vehicle users, governments, charging operators, travel service providers, automobile manufacturers and battery manufacturers.
With the rapid popularization of new energy vehicles and the east wind of new infrastructure, charging piles are gradually developing in the direction of high-power DC fast charging, unified core component standards and multi-network integration, and the construction pace is rapidly improved. In this context, charging equipment accessories such as charging guns and charging modules are bound to usher in technological upgrading, and there is still huge room for growth in the charging pile industry in the future.
This article comes from car home, the author of the car manufacturer, and does not represent car home's position.