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Sunday, December 27, 2009

Toyota Develops Solar Charging Station for Electric Vehicles


Toyota Industries Corp has developed a solar charging station for plug-in hybrid vehicles (PHVs) and electric vehicles (EVs). The municipal government of Toyota City, Aichi Prefecture plans to build 21 such stations at 11 locations such as the municipal office and branch offices. Full operation of the stations will begin in April, with 20 Prius Plug-In Hybrids.

The station is grid connected, and also captures power generated by the 1.9 kW solar panel in an 8.4 kWh storage battery, for subsequent use in charging. Maximum output using grid power is 202VAC/3.2kW. Self-sustained operation using solar power from the battery pack has a maximum output of 101VAC/1.5 kVA.

Excess solar power can be used for facilities in the system, or sold to a utility company. TIC envisions that the station can also provide power to electrical equipment in a disaster.

TIC developed the EVSE (electric vehicle supply equipment), which now has a communication function and the maximum 200V/16A/3.2kW output.

TIC has been involved with the development of charging systems for electric vehicles such as charging stands and onboard chargers since the 1990s. TIC launched its current EVSE stands in July 2009. (Earlier post.)

At the 41st Tokyo Motor Show (24 Oct - 4 Nov 2009), TIC displayed newly developed charging stands with communication devices. In addition to the basic functions of the standard charging system, the newly developed stations allow user authentication using IC card technology, and enable the collection of data such as usage conditions of the charging service and amount of power used.

During the press briefing at the show, TIC said that it aimed to increase charging functionality to respond to the needs of the charging infrastructure by developing systems that support electronic billing, and solar charging stations incorporating solar power generation to further reduce the environmental impact.

It is also concurrently, developing smaller onboard chargers with higher efficiency to meet the growing demand for plug-in hybrid and electric vehicles.

TIC has directly a number of components to the Prius, starting with the first generation system, including converters, inverters, and car air conditioning compressors.

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1 comment:

Anonymous said...

(Please re-post)
Less than 20 car companies applied for $25 BILLION DOLLARS in taxpayer money managed by a certain smug group of people at DOE in order to get loans to make green cars for Americans’. This was not all of DOE that did bad things, just a private cadre of men.

There was enough money to help every single one of the car companies that applied. The administrators applied their interpretations of the law in order to benefit the large lobby group-related firms and avoided every one of the “unconnected” companies.

The amount of lobby and influence money spent is in direct ratio to the amount of money awarded.

The smaller companies, due to lower overhead, could have dramatically more productive results with the money than the large burdened companies yet the money was given out based on political career advantages rather technology advantages.

All of the people that reviewed the applications had political and financial connections to GM, Ford, Chrysler and the large Detroit recipients.

Each of those smaller American companies had technology and resources that presented a strong economic threat, if they got the loans, to the large politically connected companies that did receive funds.

Some of the companies that have gotten money have backed out of making the electric cars they said they would make. But they still get to keep the money.

The Section 136 Law was created by the lobbyists for GM, Ford & Chrysler when they saw that they were about to go bankrupt and wanted to tap into additional taxpayer dollars by claiming the money was going to be used for electric cars in order to win rapid support for Section 136 by tugging at heartstrings. In retrospect, the money mostly went to gasoline car projects.

Some of the companies that got the money have already wasted more money than other companies applied for as their total request.

Some of the companies that got taxpayer loan money are not even American companies and/or are doing their manufacturing offshore with non-American employees.

Those who got the money had to fill out little, or no, paperwork, went through little, or no, review and were connected to the DOE people who gave them the money. Those who they wanted to keep out were forced to jump through more hoops, were slow-tracked in review and had no connections.

The decision about who would get money was made in 2008 by a private group who then pretended there was a lengthy review throughout 2009 but in fact, the money was pre-wired for a select few.

All of the things that the rejected small companies (who did not pay lobby fees) were rejected for, were the same things that the insider big companies were doing.

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