Electric vehicles that use high-power charging are quickly becoming the new standard—understanding the grid impacts of high-power charging will ensure intergrid reliability and keep charging costs low.

High-power charging is quickly becoming the new standard for electric vehicles (EVs). At 200 kilowatts (kW) and above, high-power charging is expected to help drivers spend less time charging, get back on the road faster, and travel longer distances. Creating a widespread network of reliable and interoperable high-power charging stations, however, is still elusive, as the technology's enormous power requirements are more complex than charging light-duty electric passenger vehicles at 40 kW to 50 kW and more dependent on battery conditions.

Enter the Next-Generation Profiles (NextGen Profiles) project, a signature project of the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE's) Electric Vehicles at Scale Consortium (EVs@Scale Lab Consortium) of national laboratories.

Through the NextGen Profiles project, researchers are taking critical steps to assess EVs and electric vehicle supply equipment (EVSE) that are expected to utilize high-power charging. Importantly, this includes understanding how high-power charging systems respond to grid disturbances and smart-charge-management scenarios, as well as analyzing how electric fleets perform in those situations.

NextGen Profiles is a collaborative EVs@Scale Lab Consortium project led by Argonne National Laboratory, with coprincipal investigators from Idaho National Laboratory, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), and Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Original equipment manufacturers, industry stakeholders, and EV suppliers also partner with the four national laboratories to evaluate EV assets and refine validation procedures.

"The data that we're collecting for NextGen Profiles addresses a lot of the challenges associated with vehicle electrification," said NREL's Keith Davidson, a lead principal investigator for the NextGen Profiles project. "Chief among those is charging reliability and keeping chargers operating consistently."

Technical approach bakes in planning, integration, and reliability considerations

Paramount to a seamless EV charging experience is balancing safety, charging performance, and EV battery longevity. Within those requirements, the NextGen Profiles project helps identify high-power charging system limitations, the characteristics of high-power charging sessions (called "profiles"), and issues that the power grid will likely encounter.

"Ultimately, the project seeks to develop a knowledge base that will inform high-power charging infrastructure planning, integrate storage and renewables, and ensure that the transition to EVs is reliable and affordable," Davidson said.

To achieve these goals, the NextGen Profiles project focuses on three key research areas. The first area captures EV profiles by collecting data on how EVs behave while charging. Researchers examine how diverse charging conditions affect EVs and how these profiles compare to different vehicle classes (e.g., medium- and heavy-duty vehicles) and charging types (e.g., conductive and wireless). Taken together, the data paints a holistic picture of the performance of current EV technologies and the trajectory of the industry.

The second area characterizes electric vehicle supply equipment (EVSE)—the equipment needed to charge EVs. This work involves connecting a high-power charging system to an EV emulator and running them through charging scenarios. One of the most important investigations encompasses an assessment of the entire range of current and voltage outputs that a charging system provides.

The sum of these currents and voltages are not yet attainable by most vehicles, but the emulation capability has enabled researchers to achieve those levels, understand how the systems perform, and formulate strategies for systems to handle the high-power charging needs of the future.

Characterization of EVSE also incorporates grid disturbance analysis and charge management analysis. This has included researchers subjecting charging stations to repeated high-power charging cycles to illuminate thermal management needs based on how the EVSE recovers in between high-power charge sessions.