EV charging solutions provider, ChargePoint, and power management solutions firm, Eaton, have announced a partnership to accelerate EV charging infrastructure in the US, Canada and Europe. Drawing on both company’s experiences, the collaboration seeks to simplify EV charging by developing new technologies.
Rick Wilmer, chief executive of ChargePoint said: “ChargePoint’s partnership with Eaton will deliver innovation that addresses the biggest barriers to electrified transportation. Together with Eaton we will create unprecedented value for institutions that deploy EV charging, accelerating electrification, and decarbonising the planet in parallel.”
Paul Ryan, general manager, energy transition at Eaton, said: “Customers rely on Eaton to solve their toughest power management challenges. This game-changing partnership will help do just that for vehicle charging — bringing together trusted power distribution and EV charging solutions to simplify electrification at scale.”
ChargePoint and Eaton aim to create a central hub for EV charging ecosystems from physical chargers to electrical infrastructure and engineering services. By combining services, customers should be able to benefit from effective power management, optimised infrastructure and better reliability.
As well as focusing on infrastructure and charging solutions, the partnership will explore bidirectional power flow and vehicle-to-everything (V2X) capabilities. This allows EVs to act as batteries to power buildings, other vehicles or supply energy back into the grid. For fleet applications, this could be an opportunity for operators to treat static vehicles as batteries that can be used to make money when they’re not working by selling electricity into the grid at peak times.
At this stage, there are limited examples of V2X technology in the UK, but in other countries like America, infrastructure is more advanced. While a vehicle might have the ability to discharge its battery into something other than propelling the vehicle, the equipment it’s plugged into needs to be able to accept this direction of power.
