Bidirectional charging enables solar power from a photovoltaic system to be stored in electric cars and home batteries and fed back into the home grid in the evening hours or when needed to operate household appliances. This protects the environment, saves money and creates further incentives for switching to emission-free electromobility.
More and more cars are equipped for this. Looking ahead, bidirectional energy flows could also be used to realize new vehicle-to-home (V2H) and vehicle-to-grid (V2G) solutions.
“To make a sustainable contribution to decarbonisation, we must think electromobility holistically: from green power generation to a stable, efficient grid infrastructure to storage and consumption” said Peter Wawer, head of Infineon’s Industrial Power Control division. “With our solutions for bidirectional charging, the electric car can be charged inexpensively with solar power at home and also serves as a buffer storage.”
A single-family home can consume an average of 10-15 kWh of energy per day. A fully charged car battery with a capacity of 30 to 100 kWh could therefore theoretically bridge a few days as an emergency power solution. Homeowners thus secure inexpensive electricity as well as more independence in power supply.
The new system provided by Delta allows a maximum continuous current of 34 A and achieves peak efficiencies of more than 97.5 percent. To increase power density, energy-efficient power semiconductors made of silicon carbide (SiC) from Infineon are used. Compared to silicon-based semiconductors, the compound material SiC reduces energy losses when converting current by around half. The size of charging stations can also be reduced by about 30 percent. With SiC, photovoltaic systems become more powerful, charging times at fast-charging stations and wallboxes are shorter, and the range of electric cars five to ten percent higher.
By the end of this decade, more than half of all newly registered vehicles are expected to be partially or fully electric. Green mobility can only be achieved if both vehicles and energy are carbon neutral. One key therefore lies in the use of wind and solar energy. The fluctuating availability of these energy sources must be balanced by electrical storage systems to stabilise the grids though.
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