In addition to the revolution in modern electric cars, there is the deployment of charging stations. Thanks to the efforts of communities and recharging operators, plugging in your vehicle anywhere will be simpler and easier.
How did the market for electric charging stations start?
Everyone knows the old adage that says never put the cart before the horse. In electric cars, precisely, modern history has shown that a bad chronology of events can complicate the development of new technology. Until the beginning of the last decade, the electric vehicle market was in fact limited to a few tens of thousands of vehicles worldwide. Initiated by Renault in France, reinforced by the strong development of Tesla and by the significant investments made by almost all the car manufacturers on the planet, the supply of plug-in models quickly became bloated. Except that to use these cars everywhere, it is naturally necessary to have adapted electric charging stations. The design, installation and operation of these facilities costs money, takes time and must meet the real needs of customers. However, it is difficult to qualify and define these real needs as long as these customers remain too few.
Build a network of charging stations useful for users
Admittedly, many municipalities started installing public charging stations all over the place more than ten years ago. But at the time, the electric car remaining anecdotal, few people actually used these stations whose geolocation had been made without knowing where the charging request was really located. An imperfect mesh, based more on simple intuition than the user experience, which will soon be relegated to the past thanks to the master plans for the deployment of charging infrastructure for electric vehicles provided for by the LOM. After the installation of these first terminals, the technology of electric cars has evolved a lot.
As a result, it was necessary to design and install new terminals to adapt to the capacities of the latest generation automotive batteries. And with the exponential growth of this fleet of electric cars in recent years, the establishment of a reliable, perfectly localized and efficient network of terminals becomes a necessity.
Greater technological maturity of charging stations
State-of-the-art technology is used to operate a public terminal, which must deliver sometimes very high current to the electric car, in complete safety. The slightest problem in the supply of this terminal, its electronic system or the electrical network can lead to a malfunction. The important thing before any installation is therefore to ensure the reliability of the charging equipment. While there is currently no mandatory certification for charging stations to ensure their technical compliance and reliability, the EDF group, thanks to its R&D, has set up tests in real conditions. of operation for the terminal models offered by manufacturers and deployed by its own charging operators. In particular, this enables an operator like IZIVIA to have around twenty models of different brands checked, in order to then select the systems best suited to each project entrusted to it. R&D researchers are also evaluating and securing the possibility of recharging several vehicles at the same time, the compatibility of these infrastructures with different types of vehicles and the interaction with the distribution network according to the different load combinations. These tests are carried out on test facilities of up to 1,600 kW, thus making it possible to test future ultra-fast charging stations.
The great deployment
By the end of 2021, the French network will have no less than 100,000 public electric charging stations. This network will be divided between public alternating current terminals and fast direct current charging systems, to suit all uses. The quality of their operation determines the entire future of the electric automobile. It is only with a simple and efficient charging network that the electric car can definitively supplant conventional fuel models, making it possible to reduce the level of CO emissions.2 and pollutants in our cities.
