How Stationary Batteries Could Help Your Electric Car Move

Speaker 1: I think, you know, that one of the big gatekeepers to EV adoption is going to be charging infrastructure, both the actual availability of it, as well as the perception of availability of it. And while it sounds like it's a simple project to just run more lines to more places and stick chargers on the ground. There, it turns out that there's an awful lot of power. We have to balance behind all those chargers. [00:00:30] And that can be a really big sticky problem. But a company called a ADSS tech says they've got a technology called battery buffering that can actually save us from having to add a lot of capacity in places where it may not be needed. And yet still get really fast charging. Uh, John toil is here from a ADSS tech and he's their head of global corporate and government affairs. John, before we talk about how you say you can solve this, tell us what you're trying to solve. Speaker 2: One of the big secrets out there is [00:01:00] that as you see great infrastructure everywhere from the utility, the question isn't about the utilities infrastructure, the question's really about what's the available power. Speaker 1: What's the difference between we have a good infrastructure, but we don't have enough power Speaker 2: If you take any location. So let's say I'm speaking about Manhattan. If you look at the current availability of infrastructure, meaning the cables that are carrying [00:01:30] the power throughout the city, and then you look at how much power that is actually going through those cables is typically under 600 kilowatts, which means how much electricity is available within those cables that you can tap into that is significantly lower than what the current demand cycle is in Manhattan. So without [00:02:00] having a network of chargers in the city, there is already some pretty significant limitations of how much power is available to go through it Speaker 1: In a garden hose analogy. Speaker 2: Exactly. Speaker 1: We've got a good garden hose. Speaker 2: Mm-hmm Speaker 1: <affirmative> we don't have enough water pressure or water flow. Speaker 2: Exactly right. Speaker 1: To get enough out of the nozzle or the nozzles that we see that we need for the plants that are here and coming, uh, battery buffering. What does that do to [00:02:30] fix this, this problem? Speaker 2: So let's go back to that water analogy. Let's say that, uh, Manhattan just use that example again, uh, or any city that may have great hoses, but is challenged because there's more people taking the water out of the hoses than they have the availability to, to produce. While when you're doing that, any new draw on that hose is going to bring the situation [00:03:00] far worse. If not crash some of the branches, branch circuits of that grid, it's not the utility's fault. <laugh> simply the way that these are designed and built. What do you do if you're too far away from that utility source and the utility can only give you 50 kilowats of power? Are you gonna want your vehicle tied up on the charger for days? Probably not. How about at 110 kilowats of power, which is pretty [00:03:30] standard feed going into homes and businesses. Speaker 2: What if you could take that power? What battery buffering does is that it takes a constant feed from the available power. I'll use the 110, because that's, what's most common that 110 kilowatts coming into a battery buffer charger is doing two things. First and foremost, it's building [00:04:00] a storage of energy power inside the charger so that it will essentially bump up the power that goes from the charger to the, uh, dispenser. You are charging the batteries while you are dispensing the power. So let's take the math one more step, just one, 110 will boost you up to 320. [00:04:30] So imagine if you're at that home, that's a much more rural community. You only get 110 kilowats. Maybe you have trucks. Look at the, uh, the F-150 lightning. It's 150 kilowat charge just to use Ford as the example there's others or the Porsche TACAN Porsches TACAN is 270 kilowatts. So if you want to charge the Porsche, TACAN at, uh, a place that's only getting [00:05:00] 110 kilowatts. It's going to take a very long time. Speaker 1: So your battery buffering is able to take what is basically, uh, electrical service that can only do level two Speaker 2: Mm-hmm Speaker 1: <affirmative> and allow it to power a level three fast charge. Speaker 2: So we can take 110 kilowatts and provide 320 kilowats. If it's one car, if it's two cars, we can provide 160 kilowats as basic map. But [00:05:30] the technology also allows for the charger to recharge. So the charger itself is constantly taking a charge while it's distributing the power. Say the 2, 1 60 S are the 1, 3 20. You don't need to locate your charger exclusively in places where 320 kilowats are available. You can locate it pretty much anywhere [00:06:00] you can roll. 'em out much faster. You can, you can place more chargers. Why is that? You don't have to do the infrastructure build out. You don't have to do all the build out between the utilities 320, and the point of dispenser, whether it be at the local service station or at a car dealer, Speaker 1: Does this battery buffering technology primarily target the installation of fast charge locations or does it also [00:06:30] apply to, uh, greater proliferation of level two? Speaker 2: A little bit of both. That's a great question. There are people out there that are taking a L two technology, applying a booster to it, and then that charge as it's coming out is stepped up. But the difference is, is that as you're stepping that up on the L two, you are draining that system. Well, it's not an L two, then it becomes an L three. You're [00:07:00] draining that charger very quickly. And then you have to wait for it to refresh and get the power back up again. Right? What the difference here is, is that if you're doing both simultaneously, is that the charger will refresh itself back up to a hundred percent before that first vehicle disconnects from it. So the next guy who pulls up, okay, that next guy has that instant a hundred percent. Speaker 1: Right? So that's, that's the key question that was in [00:07:30] my mind, one of the first questions I had was how much downtime is there between cars that are charging with buffering. As I was thinking, I'm depleting a battery and pulling some grid, and then the whole thing needs time to recover. But the way that you've laid it out is it's kind of doing two things at once. As you're talking, I'm imagining public charging locations, I'm imagining malls, car dealerships, in some cases, does this have any practical, economical sense [00:08:00] for the private residents? Speaker 2: I don't think so. Okay. And I don't think so because there's no real value for the homeowner. Most charging is migrating from the home to public spaces already. Speaker 1: Huh? Interesting. Speaker 2: Because people wanna get that fast charge. Let's use a gas station analogy, a gas station. You're very conditioned to, I'm gonna go a couple of blocks away. I'm going to take at most 10 minutes to fill my car, maybe go play a lottery ticket and then be [00:08:30] on my way. Speaker 1: Don't leave out. Thes slurpy, gotta get a slurpy, Speaker 2: You know, especially the cherry <laugh> yes. Speaker 1: With a layer of Coke. Uh, that's just my preference. Speaker 2: I digress. <laugh> okay. So that happens. And that's the expectation. It's what we've grown up with. It's what the, we are conditioned to. You don't wanna have to wait forever. You don't want to have to go find that's unique. You wanna be able to go the couple of blocks. So [00:09:00] service stations have figured that out and everything from the big oil branded service stations to the mom and pops to convenience stores who also offer fueling, they figured out that rather than resist adapt and actually improve your offering by doing so. Speaker 1: Okay. So this is interesting, cuz I, as I've read more and more about the C store industry, one of their big concerns is sure we can turn into electric. OACs that in concept [00:09:30] sounds pretty easy and there'll be more and more customers every year, but they don't control the inflow of energy the way they do. Now they can just call up the refiner and say, and send another truck. Exactly. But to do the dig and to bring, like you say, three 20 into a service station location, even if they had all the money in the world, they can't necessarily pull that lever. It might not just be possible in their municipality Speaker 2: Or there could be just no value in spending the money to do it cause Speaker 1: That it could be [00:10:00] hugely expensive to bring radically higher power to a location, right? Speaker 2: Oh yes. The construction costs, the permitting requirements, the, uh, laying of the conduit, the specifications, the electrical codes, it's appropriately very difficult. Speaker 1: So you're kind of allowing, uh, yesterday's grid to dress itself up functionally function as tomorrow's grid, you're making a one 10 look like a three 20, even though on [00:10:30] the back end, it's still a one 10. Speaker 2: And what happens for the station owner if they don't have to, uh, bankroll and wait, the months, it typically would take for regulatory permitting and simply tie into their local one 10 and be able to be up and running in six, eight weeks at the most they're providing three 20 level charging in weeks rather than months they're avoiding [00:11:00] the, um, electrical rate upcharge. Speaker 1: Is there still a lot of people who are looking to buy an EV who don't understand what charger can I connect it to? Do you get all the way down to the connector level? Or do you sit behind the connector? Speaker 2: We get right down to the connector. Speaker 1: Uh, are you able to do this now? Are there development or regulatory hurdles to be ironed out? Where are you in your progress of being in my neighborhood? Speaker 2: Give you an example. Sign in more Simon malls is a, uh, a mall [00:11:30] company that typically has some higher end anchor stores. Simon's business cases based upon destination shopping, Speaker 1: But also these days based a lot on reinventing those destinations. Speaker 2: Exactly. So as those experiences change and they become much more of an acute destination for where their, uh, is going, they're buying EVs, you'll start, you're starting to see a number of [00:12:00] L three chargers. Speaker 1: I think it's interesting because especially as you bring up the mall analogy, because so many things in the mall are happening faster, where I used to have a fast casual restaurant. Now I might have a Chipotle I'm in and out in 10 minutes, not stopping for 40 minutes to dine in, or I might be going to target, but to do a curbside pickup. And everything's at a faster pace now. So charging that malls might have installed even five years ago if they were early. Yes, it's not on the same is not turning at the same, uh, [00:12:30] RPM as the rest of them all experience. And by the way, a ADSS tech is based in Germany where a lot of electric car and infrastructure innovation comes from. Uh, they do have plans though, to imminently announce a new us headquarters and manufacturing.