Committed to the present & the future of e-mobility

Long live the electromobility

In 2017, during one of our commercial visits, we lived an anecdote that, to this day, allows us to continue exemplifying, and very well, one of our main contributions to the world of electromobility. 

A company that manufactured chargers had hired a person to charge and discharge an electric car's battery. The anecdote is about how they discharged this battery. Every day he left the factory and went round and round to discharge it so that he could test the charger. 

It is at this point where CINERGIA contribution makes sense, developing equipment that can be integrated into test platforms in the field of electromobility, both at the development level and at the end of the production line, improving the quality of what is manufactured and reducing the energy required for testing.

Committed to reducing energy consumption

The world is moving forward with this goal in mind: reducing power consumption. The topology shared by all our devices is a bidirectional Back-to-Back power converter consisting of two IGBT-based power stages linked by a capacitive DC-bus. The grid-side stage is an Active Boost Rectifier that produces clean sinusoidal currents with very low harmonic distortion (<3%) and a power factor close to one (adjustable by the user). Depending on the model, the converter in the equipment under the test side can be an AC voltage-controlled sink/source called Grid Simulator, an AC current-controlled sink/source known as Electronic Load, a DC voltage-controlled sink/source or a DC current-controlled sink/source known as a Bidirectional DC Converter. Upon this shared topology, each model (AC/DC, Voltage/Current Controlled) will differ to adapt the hardware to the specific functionalities and filtering needs. Thanks to the bidirectional topology, all CINERGIA’s products are regenerative.

Our regenerative converters are a cost-effective solution that can replace old technology as passive loads. It absorbs the regenerative energy from the unit under test and returns it to the grid. This technology offers two big advantages; the reduction of the total power required in the test of the grid, at the same time lessening the dimension of the power infrastructure, and the reduction of the total power consumed during the test. The savings are around 80% on an electrical charging infrastructure test platform, also enabling V2G//V2H tests. Additionally, the bidirectional hardware allows it to work, on the same device, as a sink or source, offering more usefulness.

Technology ready for e-mobility future

Versatility is one of our core values

We all know how fast electromobility is progressing, the constant changes and the new technologies that are being developed. For that reason, and we want to emphasize it, we design versatile equipment that allows us to adapt to the constant changes in the sector, from 7.5kW to 1.2MW.

CINERGIA has designed the most complete and versatile converter in the regenerative energy testing market: the GE&EL+  vAC/DC.

We have ingeniously combined the functionalities of several products in a single cabinet to offer the most flexible and unique testing equipment. A product that gets together the whole CINERGIA’s catalogue combining the functionalities of a Grid Simulator, an Electronic Load and a DC Bidirectional Converter.

On the other hand, we optimized a range of products with two functionalities, to offer the best solutions in any field of application, these are the case of GE+ vAC/DC, EL+ vAC/DC, and GE&EL+ vAC. Three products are created to perform various typologies of tests.

Ready to face the new technical challenges of the industry

We are also experiencing a growth in power and voltage within electromobility at industrial levels (electric trucks and buses). Our R&D team has designed cutting-edge technology that allows increasing this voltage and power up to high levels, through the master/slave connection, which can connect up to 8 units, serial or in parallel, through optical fiber and in real-time.

Today this is already a reality in electric trucks and buses, and we believe it can become so in the future in utility vehicles, provided that battery technology advances and develops smaller models with more autonomy.

We simplify realistic testing through R&D

We are constantly working to improve our technology to support R&D engineers on innovation in battery performance. Our equipment allows us to perform tests that would be more complicated in real life.

This is the case for one of our Dutch customers, who wanted to evaluate the impact on the battery of one of their electric trucks on the ascent and descent of a mountain pass. In order to do so, they had two options: to go to Switzerland in search of this slope or to rely on our equipment to simulate these slopes and be able to perform all the necessary tests from their headquarters in the Netherlands.

Our control interface includes the functionality to develop test sequences, which can be entered via .csv documents. Our customers can enter driving profiles to be executed by our equipment.

Additionally, we have developed a specialized battery testing module that allows us to create a flexible and intuitive sequence of battery cycles. Our interface software is an essential tool because power electronics engineers can access all the functionalities of their converters. It also allows precise control of the charging, discharging, and cycling of any type of battery. On the one hand, the basic parameters of this software include fast charge, float voltages, and charge and discharge currents. On the other hand, advanced parameters add energy (Ah) and time as transition conditions.

A look at the present and the future of e-mobility

As we all know, mobility is and will continue to be one of the main challenges in our society. In the 21st century, testing is essential both for the development of new technologies and to ensure the quality of the products manufactured. This is where CINERGIA makes its main contribution, developing and manufacturing high-performance equipment to test electromobility platforms.

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