Irish technology company evHACS has announced 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. evHACS is an Irish Company supported by Enterprise Ireland.
The amount of EV chargers required by 2030 is significant according to multiple sources: Ireland had 1,900 public EV chargers in 2021, this 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; the European Court of Auditors says there are 220,000 public chargers in Europe in 2020 which must grow to 1 million by 2025 and 3 million by 2030; EY, a consultancy, estimates that Europe will need 65 million chargers in total to fuel 130 million EV by 2035.
Solution
Is the charging industry capable of providing the number of chargers required? The jury is out. However, there is an industry which can help. 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;
• lowering CO² output and energy consumption
The Heating, Ventilation Air Conditioning (“HVAC”) industry is expected to enter a period of exceptional growth over the next decade. The International Energy Agency (“IEA”) say they expect heat pump units installed globally to grow from 180 million units to a stock of over 600 million units by 2030. The stock of air conditioning units are also expected to increase from 2 billion units currently to almost 3 billion units by 2030. evHACS seeks to show that the heat pump (and air conditioning unit) is the perfect unit to house an EV charger.
The HVAC 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.
Ireland is targeting 600,000 domestic heat pumps installed by 2030. The UK will grow the installation of electric heat pumps from 30,000 per year currently to 600,000 per year by 2028. COP26 has continued the pressure on all Governments to reduce carbon output through to 2040. The war in Ukraine has also heightened the necessity to present to market solutions which will lower oil and natural gas dependency.
Jeff Aherne, CEO evHACS says:
“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. However, it uniquely balances “both” the heat pump and the charger introducing a flexibility never seen before.
See more stories here.
