Power Quality & EV Charging Stations

EV is going to reshape the way we transport in the United States. Cars, bikes, trucks, trams, and even airplanes will soon be completely electric, reducing the carbon footprint significantly. The advancement in battery technology, government rebates, and significant drops in prices have made the EV market more appealing to the consumer. The successful EV sales are projected to rise by 50% by 2040.

EV’s are high-tech, with zero carbon footprint; however, there is something that everyone is overlooking: “power quality.” Power quality defines the health of the electrical power a facility is getting in from the utility. While the “good power quality” results in the efficient operation of the electrical loads, the “poor power quality” degrades the electrical system with premature damage to the loads and increased power bills. Poor power quality is a growing concern in both the consumer and energy sectors, costing millions of dollars of maintenance every year.

The EV behaves like any other nonlinear load in the system drawing nonlinear waveform from the utility (power company). With nonlinear waveforms, EV’s generate harmonics, noise, transients, and other poor power quality to the system, causing detrimental effects to other electrical loads such as your TVs, home theatres, computer, printers, etc. The possible results from poor power quality are:

• Decreased longevity of your rest of home electrical appliances.
• Increased maintenance and damage to the loads.
• Increased power consumption and erratic behavior of the loads, including the EV station.

The utility company also suffers from these poor power quality issues. The utility and its distribution system are not designed well enough to accommodate a high percentage of EVs in the next few years. Studies show that the EV charging stations harm the power grid in various ways:

• Increased distribution losses through transformer and wire, aka Ohmic losses.
• Shortened capacitor life with possible resonance phenomenon.
• System imbalance as more EV’s are added to the system.

The power companies do not use any power quality equipment to address the significant concerns from the EV stations, eventually sending all poor power quality back to their customers. In other words, the rest of the residential and commercial facilities are negatively affected by the power quality issues generated by the EV stations.

Filter My Power can design a system utilizing patented Waveform Correction technology which will not only protect the main panel and all equipment it feeds but also provide the filtration necessary to avoid any catastrophic failure of equipment.