extreme fast charging DOE $15 Million Investment into US XFC Infrastructure

[G. David Felt]

G. David Felt - Staff Writer Alternative Energy - www.cheersandgears.com

DOE $15 Million Investment into US XFC Infrastructure

 The Department of Energy has announced funding opportunity number DE-FOA-0001808 for building XFC (Extreme Fast Charging) across the United States. The floor is $500,000 with a maximum single payout of $5,000,000 as the DOE works to achieve a reduction of 2.5 billion gallons per year of petroleum by 2020.

The focus of this grant system is to encourage and fun development of the new XFC charging system and batteries that would allow mass adoption of EV auto's. The focus is to decrease charging times while maintaining currents of less than 400 kWh and assure battery state charge increases by 50%. Battery cells are to be capable of 500 cycles or more of charging with less than a 20% fade in energy capacity consisting of a 10 Min charge to full.

Toshiba has accomplished this and this funding is to encourage others to enter the battery and charging race to supply infrastructure and batteries for a cleaner, quieter city and road.

Currently most level 3 DC chargers in the US excluding Tesla only put out 50kWh of power, where in Europe they put out 100 kWh. Porsche installed their new 350 kWh chargers as they started to build their e-Mission car. Since then Europe has settled on a 360kWh XFC charging system that will fully charge a 400 mile range battery in about 15 min.

Since investment costs are high, the DOE felt it needed to put out this $15 million dollar program to drive investments and research into better batteries and chargers. DOE by setting a Spec ceiling of 400 kWh is looking to help support the current standard of CCS which is used by all of Germany, most of Europe and the US. CHAdeMO is a spec using in Japan and the US only by Nissan.

DOE Grant Site