DOE announced on December 21 awards totaling nearly $7 million in research and development funding that will help to reduce the current costs of electric vehicle chargers by 50% over the next three years. With DOE support, manufacturers in California, New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania will work to improve the development and design of charging equipment. This research will promote "smart" charging capabilities that can help ensure electric vehicles enhance, rather than strain, existing electrical grid capacity.
Two of the four selected projects will focus on improving electric vehicle chargers that attach to consumers' homes and are used by the owners to charge their vehicles while they are at home. Two other projects will focus on chargers used at commercial and public locations to charge large numbers of vehicles, including commercial fleets of delivery vehicles.
These research and development investments will leverage additional investments from the industry grantees. See the DOE press release and the DOE Office of Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability website.
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Delta Products Corporation – Fremont, California
DOE share: $1,997,450; Recipient share: $1,441,770
Delta will streamline the development of residential electric vehicle chargers that rely on low-cost secure wireless networks that can connect the chargers directly to electric utilities. The project will work to minimize the cost of communications between the charger and the electric utility and, at the same time, meet the local demand for smart charging.