New Irish solution combines EV charging with heat pumps and AC units
Irish technology company evHACS has announced today the launch of its innovative new charging system for electric vehicles (EVs) which it says will help to solve the challenge of charging solutions for electric-powered vehicle charging in the coming years.
The company seeks to bring together three sectors: the electric vehicle charging ecosystem, the connected autonomous vehicle environment, and the refrigeration and air conditioning industry.
The amount of EV chargers required by 2030 is significant according to multiple sources. Ireland had 1,900 public EV chargers in 2021, but this number needs to increase to 30,000 by 2030 according to reports.
The UK had 25,000 public EV chargers installed in 2021 and there needs to be 280,000 to 480,000 by 2030, while the European Court of Auditors says there were 220,000 public chargers in Europe in 2020, which must grow to one million by 2025 and three million by 2030. EY, a consultancy, estimates that Europe will need 65 million chargers in total to fuel 130 million EV by 2035.
Is the charging industry capable of providing the number of chargers required? The jury is out. evHACS (short for electric vehicle charging heat pump air conditioning system) is a business with a patent-pending technology that uniquely combines electric car charging with heat pumps, air conditioners and refrigeration units.
The technology seeks to contribute to lowering carbon home and commercial premises emissions by integrating two technologies, thereby lowering installation costs, lowering running costs, dynamically managing power consumption in the home, and lowering CO² output and energy consumption.
evHACS seeks to show that the heat pump (and air conditioning unit) is the perfect unit to house an EV charger. The HVAC (heating, ventilation and air conditioning) industry will work with evHACS to ensure that a proportion of units have the technology on board. The HVAC industry has the capability to significantly ameliorate the supply of EV chargers to satisfy the growing demand globally, targeting 5% of new HVAC units offering the technology it represents in excess of 2.1 million heat pump units and 50 million air conditioning units by 2030.
Jeff Aherne, CEO evHACS, said: “evHACS technology is simplicity at its best. Integrating a charger into a HVAC unit saves on separate installations of both a charger and an air conditioning unit, saving time, money and personnel. In domestic situations where a heat pump is increasingly proving popular over natural gas and oil, it makes sense to have a charger integrated into the unit.”
A domestic charger uses around 7kW of power and a heat pump uses up to 5kW, depending on its size. A house typically has 12 to 16kW of power, so having both the heat pump and the charger running concurrently risks tripping the main breaker if other appliances are also switched on.
Other manufacturers of chargers use load balancing to reduce the charge to the vehicle in order to stop the tripping and circuit failure. evHACS also balances – but it uniquely balances 'both' the heat pump and the charger, introducing a flexibility never seen before.
The evHACS solution launches today (Tuesday, September 13) at Motion by Electronomous in the Future Mobility Campus of Ireland – a leading unique ecosystem developing all forms of mobility and is a natural home to showcase this new technology.