Standardization must work to optimize electric vehicle evolution
Better Place presented
an electric car
prototype
Standardization provides both an opportunity and a hurdle for the future of electric vehicles. This was just one of the conclusions of a special workshop held during the IEC 73rd General Meeting, which took place from 18 to 22 October 2009 in Tel Aviv.
Organized by SII (the Standards Institution of Israel) in association with the IEC, the event brought together managers and R&D engineers from electric vehicle and infrastructure developers, key strategists from major Smart Grid programmes and experts from IEC TCs (Technical Committees).The workshop was opened by Renzo Tani, Immediate Past President of the IEC.
The Chairman of the workshop was Ziva Patir, Vice-President of Better Place, in charge of international standardization efforts. Better Place already has operations in Israel, Denmark and Australia and is offering electric vehicle and charging solutions to markets such as the United States of America, Canada and Japan.
Patir underlined that electric vehicles provide a unique opportunity to address global challenges. However, she warned, the standardization community needed to rise to the complex issues covering charging systems, plugs and infrastructure, as well as battery technologies.
George Arnold, National Coordinator for Smart Grid Interoperability at the United States of America’s NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology),
joined the workshop to give his insight into the Smart Grid architecture being developed under U.S. President Barack Obama. He explained the complex standardization issues being addressed, which included the ability of the future Smart Grid to be able to provide charging capacity for future electric vehicles.
Cyriacus Bleijs, Chairman of IEC TC 69: Electric road vehicles and electric industrial trucks, expressed his frustration at the lack of commitment to and involvement of the electrical utilities in his TC’s work. He stated that their involvement was critical in addressing some of the fundamental engineering challenges. Bleijs set out how his TC is working closely with both IEC SC (Subcommittee) 23H: Industrial plugs and socket-outlets, and the key automotive technical committee in ISO (International Organization for Standardization) TC 22: Road vehicles.
Ziva Patir |
George Arnold |
Cyriacus Bleijs |
Speaker after speaker identified the enormous potential of electric vehicle technology, as well as the significant challenges presented for standardization. These include the ability of standards development organizations around the world to come together to ensure that the market can be served by international standards.
Better Place’s Patir summed up her feelings: “IEC and other major standardization bodies have an excellent opportunity to avoid another plug and socket disaster. The market wants one solution in all aspects of the electric vehicle market – be it the charging plugs and sockets, the battery interfaces or the data transfer technology from the utilities.”
Shai Agassi, Better Place’s Founder and CEO, gave a closed-door briefing at the NC (National Committees) Presidents workshop. |
