Improving battery life continues to be the key area for developing electric vehicles. With the recent breakthroughs on endurance, the next challenge is to improve the charging time for EV. In order to improve the charging efficiency of basic chargers, High Power Charging (HPC), which is supported by major European and American automakers, has rapidly become widely used to solve the problem of excessive charging.

Mass-produced passenger vehicles on the market have charging currents ranging 200~240A and voltage between 300~400V. The first of two ways to improve the EV charging speed is by increasing the current. When it comes to the thermal problems caused by the tolerance of components and contact resistance, the charging current increases very quickly after more than 100kW, which poses a great challenge to the battery and charging devices. The current may even have to reach 800A to have a chance to match the future 350kW~400kW superchargers. The second way is to increase the voltage. Take the Porsche Taycan for example, which adopts a CCS high-voltage 800V charging system and can charge up to 80% in 15 minutes in its fast charging mode, providing a driving distance of at least 400 kilometers. As the voltage rises, the current increase is relatively small, and problems such as for heat treatments are less likely to occur.

Chroma 17040 Raises the Bar for HPC Battery Testing

In the face of HPC development, battery cell performance, battery pack structure, and battery management system design will become more challenging, and test requirements will be more complicated. In order to improve the efficiency of the HPC battery test process, testers must focus on power demand and test risk management.

Chroma 17040 can provide up to 600kW power, 1,500A current, and 1,000V voltage, answering the continuing increase of voltage and current in HPC applications. The powerful test system uses current control synchronization technologies to achieve current switch time without delay in parallel channel mode. It can simulate charging stations under high-power fast charging, read the battery pack BMS data, evaluate the internal battery cell balance, and, most importantly, test the impact on the service life. Alternatively, Chroma 17040 can also be set to battery simulator mode for testing the high-voltage and high-current charging of EVSE.

For test risk management, the 17040 system has multiple alarm and protection modes to ensure the safety of your personnel. The tester has passed the VDE-AR-N 4105 islanding detection requirements to ensure safety and reliability of the energy recovered to the grid. Moreover, it acquired the CE certification by meeting the EU requirements of anti-EMI, EMS, and safety – a necessity for automakers with global production lines. Chroma 17040 can load the actual charging and discharging waveforms of the vehicle for use in EV endurance testing, product incoming and outgoing quality control, design verification research, battery pack production, and other purposes. Altogether, Chroma 17040 is the best tool for testing a wide variety of HPC applications.

▲Chroma 17040 Regenerative High-Power Battery Pack Charge/Discharge Test System (600kW)