What we do in E-mobility

Vattenfall’s top priority when it comes to charging of electric vehicles is to make it as convenient as possible for the customer.

On the Research and Development (R&D) side, Vattenfall work within three main fields, all concerning electrification of transports. Those three fields are:

• Optimised Low Power Charging Solutions
• Future Charging Solutions
• Exploratory and Feasibility Studies

Optimised Low Power Charging Solutions

To make charging at low power convenient for the customer, and at the same time make sure that the power grid can cope with the increased load from electric vehicles, Vattenfall R&D work with a number of technical projects. Some of the projects deal with home charging, in order to optimize electric vehicle charging with respect to household power capacity, environmental variables, energy usage and contracts. Other areas are public charging and charging of electric vehicle fleets.

Future Charging Solutions

When it comes to future charging solutions, Vattenfall R&D work with solutions for fast charging and automatic charging. Fast charging means high charging power, which the power grid needs to be prepared for. Vattenfall are also looking at inductive automatic charging system – without the need for a cord. The electric car is placed over a plate in the ground and electricity is transferred wirelessly to the car battery, without the components having direct physical contact.

Exploratory and Feasibility Studies

Within this field, Vattenfall test and evaluate technical solutions that could be available in the future. Such solutions are electrified road transport. Also plug-in hybrid city buses is a promising future solution as well as fully electric heavy vehicles. Vattenfall are also investigating how the energy in electric vehicle batteries can be used as back-up power during peak hours, co-called Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G). When the batteries have reached the end of their life as energy storage in electric vehicles, they could eventyually be used for other purposes – something that Vattenfall are also investigating.

In June 2011, a large demonstration project ended, which was a cooperation between Vattenfall, Volvo, ETC Battery and Fuel Cells and the Swedish Energy Agency (Energimyndigheten). In this project, 3 plug-in hybrid electric vehicles were built and tested, in order to find out how they can fill the role of family cars. This project is unique in that the cars were built by a major car manufacturer (Volvo Cars) and tested by real people, in their real environment. The results were very positive and the final report can be read by clicking the link on the right side of this page.

Cooperation

Cooperation is an essential cornerstone of the R&D program. We cooperate with several stakeholders:

• Universities and research institutes (Chalmers University of Technology, Royal Institute of Technology, the Viktoria Institute)
• Elforsk, the Swedish jointly owned energy industry research and development organization.