NOVI, Mich., Sept. 12, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- EV/Battery Critical Power Summit -- Today Rhombus Energy Solutions released a white paper on the criticality of charging infrastructure reliability for medium/heavy duty (M/HD) electric vehicles (EVs), and the impact that the charging infrastructure has on M/HD EV fleet availability and operating cost. For M/HD EV original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), the charging infrastructure is not the primary business and often represents less than 20% of the total sale price. However, the charging system has a direct impact on fleet availability/uptime. Lack of reliability or reduced serviceability impacts vehicle availability, which impacts customer satisfaction.
"The impact of charging infrastructure on medium/heavy duty EV fleet availability is undeniably significant," said Rick Sander, Chief Executive Officer at Rhombus Energy Solutions. "Charging solutions based on automobile charging systems, even those based on commercial Class 2 fast chargers, are not up to the challenge of medium/heavy duty EV fleet charging. We have seen annual failure rates of auto-based charging systems that approached or exceeded 100%, which places an unacceptable burden on medium/heavy duty EV fleet operators."
Charging system outages have a huge financial and logistical impact on M/HD EV fleets. These outages can mean that multiple vehicles are offline for days at a time, impacting hundreds or thousands of commuters, or dozens to hundreds of deliveries. The cost of a week of downtime for a single M/HD EV fleet charger supporting public transit buses can be over $15,000. The reliability needed for these charging systems cannot be achieved by "up-scaling" Class 1 or Class 2 automobile charging systems, as these systems are not designed for the continuous operation or environmental stresses inherent in M/HD EV fleet charging.
"Designing, deploying and commissioning high-power charging systems for medium/heavy duty electric vehicles is a non-trivial task," said Joseph Gottlieb, CTO of Rhombus Energy Solutions. "Factors such as continuous operation at rated load and serviceability must be designed in from the start to achieve the required reliability and to ensure fleet availability. Rhombus has designed our medium/heavy duty EV charging infrastructure to exceed these requirements, while at the same time being customizable to meet the specific needs of vehicle OEMs."
For M/HD EV fleet operators, understanding the differentiators and critical design parameters between various classes of charging solutions can help them to make better choices when purchasing their EVs and the charging systems that go with them. Because Rhombus Energy Solutions' M/HD EV fleet charging solutions are designed specifically for the environment and requirements that they support, annual failure rates are significantly lower than those of competing solutions. Additionally, Rhombus' charging solutions facilitate maximum availability of M/HD EV fleet vehicles, which helps to lower the fleet's total cost of ownership. You can download the white paper at http://www.rhombusenergysolutions.com/charging-infrastructure-for-ev-fleets-wp-09_12-19/.
About Rhombus Energy Solutions
Rhombus develops innovative, high efficiency power conversion and energy management systems for energy storage, alternative energy, vehicle charging, microgrid and test equipment applications. Rhombus offers standalone products, power conversion modules, and semi-custom configurations, as well as contracted product development services and high-power certification testing including UL 1741 & IEEE 1547. Rhombus also offers advanced cloud-based data communications with analytics and visualization interfaces. For more information, please visit www.RhombusEnergy.com.
SOURCE Rhombus Energy Solutions
