It is smaller, lighter and even easier to handle – and yet it can do so much more: the new HPC charging connector from Phoenix Contact E-Mobility achieves up to one million watts of power transmission in combination with the appropriate cable and a suitably equipped charging station.
Even the first High Power Charging (HPC) system, with up to 500 amps of charging power, is a top performer when it comes to fast charging. This is achieved by a cooling system integrated into the charging cable, which can dissipate the heat generated during charging. This is because the enormous amounts of energy that have to make their way into the vehicle through the charging cable really heat up the plastic and copper. Now the developers at Phoenix Contact E-mobility have succeeded in making another drastic leap in performance.
The new HPC charging cable from the CHARX connect professional product family charges vehicles with 800 amps, and in Boost Mode even with 1000 amps, i.e. one megawatt. This enables charging times that come close to those of a classic refueling process. “This means that our products achieve everything that is currently available on the market,” says Florian Grothaus, industrial engineering graduate and product manager for the new HPC generation at Phoenix Contact E-Mobility. “In this way, we enable our customers to provide charging infrastructure that can quickly recharge any vehicle on the market.”
The charging infrastructure is not the only decisive factor here: “Electric cars on the market today are not yet able to handle these charging powers. But our charging connector paves the way for fast charging of even larger battery capacities, for future e-cars, but also for utility vehicles and construction machinery, for example.”
Making the tried and tested better
The highlight: the existing infrastructure does not have to be changed significantly. The optimized cooling concept ensures that the cooling liquid is fed directly through the cable cores and thus cools the cable right up to the contacts. The optimized housing of the new charging connectors is slightly smaller, lighter and easier to handle than that of the first HPC generation – but even more powerful in combination with the charging cable and charging pole. “With this development, we have the opportunity to close the gap between the existing system, which at 500 amps was previously the limit on the market, and megawatt charging, which is still under development,” emphasizes Robert Ewendt. The graduate engineer is HPC Project Manager at Phoenix Contact E-Mobility.
“In addition, with the Combined Charging System (CCS), which Phoenix Contact helped develop years ago in the normative world, we can now also enter the utility vehicle sector. This is now possible thanks to the high performance.” Electrically powered buses or trucks can therefore use the established charging standard and the comprehensive CCS infrastructure with this charging plug.
For project manager Robert Ewendt, who helped develop the High Power Charging technology at Phoenix Contact, this is a milestone: “I have been familiar with the topic of cooled charging since it started with us in 2015. Combining water and electricity in one housing was a real innovation. And then also with the requirement to be able to carry 400 and later 500 amps of current,” he recalls.
Series production of the HPC components from the CHARX product family began at the end of 2019 – this gave the ultra-fast charging pioneers in the Phoenix Contact Group a head start in the market: “The performance is still completely sufficient for common vehicles to achieve short charging times.” To achieve this, they relied on interchangeable contacts and mating faces right from the start. This means that charging station operators do not have to dismantle the entire connector for maintenance, but can simply replace the required parts in a few simple steps. These features are also retained in the latest components of the CHARX connect product family – and can therefore turn not only cars, but also electrically powered trucks and buses into charging power millionaires.
