BP pulse VW Charger with battery inside

zg3409

Knock Road Belfast. Plate states 200kWh battery fitted inside. Branded BP pulse but plate says VW. Not yet active.

I put it on plugshare app here

https://www.plugshare.com/location/477763

the_amazing_raisin

I remember a few months ago there was an article about BP ordering a bunch of those chargers, nice to see them getting rolled out

I guess that's BP's way of getting around the grid connection cost

Maybe EasyGo might consider a few of them for ROI, since they don't seem to be able to justify going over 50kW grid connection

Fingleberries

That's great to start seeing them out in the wild already.

The VW / BP announcement touted that they could be installed without a high power grid connection. This would make them very attractive to forecourt operators.

The Flexpole units can be directly connected to a low voltage grid which removes the requirement for a dedicated substation and costly construction work, significantly reducing installation times while still providing fast charging speeds of up to 150kW

I think this may have been the story you were thinking of https://www.volkswagenag.com/en/news/2022/04/volkswagen-group-and-bp-launch-strategic-partnership-to-rapidly-.html#

Although, I wonder how that works practically. If the battery is charged from a low voltage grid and, say, two cars have charged from 20-80%. Would the third car have to wait (or be on AC speeds) until the battery recharges before the charge point to deliver full-whack charging speeds?

innrain

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119990844#Comment_119990844

It still takes 50kW power input, however with the buffer battery it can deliver much higher output. Cars will not charge continuously at 200kW and even if the battery is depleted by a sequence of consecutive fast charging it will default to the 50kW input.

It has a 190kWh battery Lets assume ID.4 82kWh with ideal charging from 20% to 80% as described here. It needs about 30 mins to add about 50kWh. Meanwhile the charger adds to its own battery 25kWh which sums up that the charger is loosing 25kWh every half hour. This means that the 9th car in the row with perfect charging and immediate switch to the next car would have to use the 50kW input. If you assume 5 mins between cars it adds another car to the row. The downside is the 200kWh battery cost so unlikely to see this used by easygo or ecars

graememk

ESB is going to be left behind in NI... Maybe its their plan all along!?

But Battery "buffered" DC Chargers are a good idea, Isnt there one big place in england that is run basically from batteries? (also has solar etc).

the_amazing_raisin

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119991307#Comment_119991307

Honestly I think that's their plan in ROI as well 😏

I think the Gridserve Electric Forecourt in Braintree is the one you're thinking of? They've a big battery on site and a solar farm nearby

Those chargers would really be great along more rural routes. Pop 2 in on the regular 50kW connection, they're both charged overnight and you've got 400kWh available to charge cars.

That's probably enough for 10-20 cars before you'd hit low battery, so there's maybe 1-2 days a year you'll be restricting power, but 99% of the time you'll be fine

Too bad VW didn't slap an inverter on it as well, you could sell some unused energy back to the grid in the evening to make some extra cash

unkel

Tesla have done this for years in some Supercharger sites - have a Tesla Mega pack (4MWh) sitting beside the chargers. Great idea, hopefully with a roofed structure with many solar PV panels on it too, just like this:

Now obviously all those solar PV panels aren't enough to power even 1 car at the maximum charging speed, but it does help considerably.

dsandson

Just passed this charger this morning and it's up and running. Massive screen on the front is really quite bright. We'll the whole thing seems massive.

the_amazing_raisin

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120006757#Comment_120006757

Yeah it's a bit of a chunky boy, for some reason it reminds me of those American style double door fridge freezers

the_amazing_raisin

Am I then only person who got a mental image of one of these being towed along behind an EV so it's a BYO range extender 😂

the_amazing_raisin

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119995111#Comment_119995111

It's interesting the different design choices. You can see Tesla are going for the larger sites when distributed chargers, rectifiers and batteries. Kempower and Gridserve seem to do similar things so I guess it's better to have the flexibility for large hubs

I guess the advantage of the VW integrated design is you can just put one or two down with relatively small ground works, so probably suits smaller sites

joe1303l

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120007455#Comment_120007455

These VW units are ideal for existing fuel stations, workplaces and locations with a lot of vehicle throughput such as car hire firms or main dealers. The battery cost could easily be offset by the alternative of an ESB network upgrade.

liamog

Data sheet for the charger nerds

https://www.eon.de/content/dam/eon/eon-de-zwei/documents/Geschaeftskunden/eon-drive/20211025-1442-in150-28844-datenblatt-drive-booster-en-210x297.pdf