Fuji Electric updates 25kw CHAdeMO charging station with slimmer looks

Electric car DC Fast Charging stations are generally huge, but Fuji Electric's new 25 kilowatt CHAdeMO DC Fast Charge station is sleek, slim, and ready to plug into ChargePoint's network.

On Thursday, Fuji Electric announced the latest version of their UL Listed 25 kilowatt DC Quick Charging Station for electric vehicles. It is the fourth generation of this CHAdeMO compatible charging station, and is sleeker and slimmer than predecessor units, allowing for more flexibility in site location. The 25 kilowatt charge rate makes it less susceptible to incurring demand charges from utility companies than higher power charging stations.

The CHAdeMO standard was developed in Japan several years ago and is widely used in that country. It supports a quick recharging experience for electric car owners, and studies of Japanese electric car owners have shown that when the CHAdeMO charging network became operational electric car utilization went way up. This style of fast charging utilizes a high power DC current between charging station and car, and requires a large external box to hold the power electronics. Normal J1772 charging stations use a much lower power AC current, and the conversion to DC is done on-board the electric car.

“Over the past five years we have remained focused on continually improving our product to adapt to the evolving needs of EV owners and station owners,” said Larry Butkovich, General Manager of EV Systems for Fuji Electric Corp. of America. “We’ve taken proven technology from our other businesses and applied them in new ways, such as the use of our ultra-reliable power supply and high-speed MOSFETs in our DC Quick Charger.”

The new version integrates support for the ChargePoint protocol. This will allow charging station operators on ChargePoint to deploy fast charging stations for their customers' use.

Because the Fuji station is lower power than other CHAdeMO charging stations, a recharge session will take a few minutes longer. However this design offers several advantages to charging station operators that may result in wider deployment. The unit costs less both to purchase and to install, and will incur fewer demand charges making it less expensive for the charging station operator to run.

In November, Fuji and EVoasis announced installation of the previous version of this charging station at a Residence Inn in San Juan Capistrano. After two months, station data shows disbursement of nearly 2 megawatt-hours of electricity, and averaging five users per day. “The success we’re seeing with the charging station at the Residence Inn has reaffirmed our belief that the development of DC Quick Charging infrastructure is critical to the long-term success of the EV industry,” said Phil Charatz, President and CEO of Fuji Electric Corp. of America. “Fuji Electric will continue to invest heavily in R&D to manufacture products that will further enhance the EV owner’s experience and reduce the total cost of ownership for station owners.”

Electric cars supporting CHAdeMO are the Nissan Leaf and Mitsubishi i-MiEV. While there are a large number of these on the road, the automobile industry, via the SAE J1772 committee, have chosen a different standard for DC Fast Charging. The SAE DC Fast Charging standard is not yet available in any production electric car, with the Chevy Spark EV slated to be the first electric car to support SAE DC Fast Charging. Fuji Electric says they are working on SAE DC Fast Charging support, for the future as such cars become available.