Photo: Charge Wind
A start-up electric vehicle charging company has come up with a unique solution for charging vehicles using wind and solar power. Change Wind is developing the Wind and Solar Tower, a freestanding unit that incorporates both a wind turbine and solar panels along with battery storage to provide grid-free service for electric cars.
The towers, better presented to the world back in March, also offer a solution for charging electric vehicles in rural areas or along major highways to facilitate EV road trips. The company says the Wind and Solar Tower is capable of supporting so-called Level 4 DC charging with a flow rate of 380 kW at up to 1,000 volts. At that level, the system delivers 6.333 kW, roughly 22 miles of range, per minute. That works out to over 300 miles of range in 15 minutes.
While current cars don’t have the systems to accommodate that rate, the company says the new 800-volt architecture of the Porsche Taycan, Audi e-tron, Hyundai Ioniq 5 and Kia EV6 is a step towards being able to charge vehicles at higher and faster rates than current Level 3 technology.
Also, the higher voltage and kW flow would be ideally suited for charging large electric semi-trucks. In the meantime, Wind Change would also be able to offer more traditional Level 2 and 3 charging capability.
Each of the envisioned charging stations would also be equipped with a one-megawatt storage battery allowing the Wind and Solar Tower to produce and harvest current whenever the wind is blowing, or the sun is out.
While the company has tested a single tower in Pennsylvania over five years, it’s still in the process of securing capital to go into full scale production and deployment of the system. The firm says once the money is in place, the first tower could roll out of production in 13 months.
While current cars don’t have the systems to accommodate that rate, the company says the new 800-volt architecture of the Porsche Taycan, Audi e-tron, Hyundai Ioniq 5 and Kia EV6 is a step towards being able to charge vehicles at higher and faster rates than current Level 3 technology.
Also, the higher voltage and kW flow would be ideally suited for charging large electric semi-trucks. In the meantime, Wind Change would also be able to offer more traditional Level 2 and 3 charging capability.
Each of the envisioned charging stations would also be equipped with a one-megawatt storage battery allowing the Wind and Solar Tower to produce and harvest current whenever the wind is blowing, or the sun is out.
While the company has tested a single tower in Pennsylvania over five years, it’s still in the process of securing capital to go into full scale production and deployment of the system. The firm says once the money is in place, the first tower could roll out of production in 13 months.
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