Recharging batteries

Charg­ing an elec­tric ve­hi­cle overnight, when en­ergy costs are lower, pro­vides most users with enough for a day's dri­ving. The range of elec­tric cars is on av­er­age 130 to 250 kilo­me­tres, de­pend­ing on the model and dri­ving style, enough for most peo­ple for one day. Yet, there is also a net­work of charg­ing sta­tions around the coun­try –both pub­lic and pri­vate– which do the same job as petrol sta­tions, though most are in the Barcelona area. Ac­cord­ing to the Cata­lan en­ergy in­sti­tute, ICAEN, there are 1,062 charg­ing points in Cat­alo­nia, most of which are in the Cata­lan cap­i­tal.

Of these, only six are su­per­fast charg­ing points (120 kW) and can only be used by Tesla ve­hi­cles. An­other 57 are fast charg­ing sta­tions, 40 are semi-fast charg­ing points, and the ma­jor­ity, 959, pro­vide nor­mal charg­ing speeds. How­ever, elec­tric ve­hi­cles can also be recharged at home, at work, in many pub­lic car parks and shop­ping cen­tres.

Ex­perts say the elec­tric ve­hi­cle is a good op­tion for re­duc­ing de­pen­dence on for­eign en­ergy sources, as elec­tric­ity gen­er­a­tion does not de­pend so much on im­ported oil. En­ergy pro­duc­tion in Cat­alo­nia is based on nat­ural gas (40%) and nu­clear power (45%), but also on al­ter­na­tive sources, such as wind and solar.

Users of this type of trans­port gen­er­ally charge their ve­hi­cles at home or in spe­cial park­ing places. In fact, elec­tric ve­hi­cle users re­ally need a charg­ing point wher­ever they usu­ally park. In May, Cat­alo­nia's Civil Code was mod­i­fied so that elec­tric ve­hi­cle users no longer need per­mis­sion from their com­mu­nity of neigh­bours to in­stall a charg­ing point where they live, and in­form­ing them of their in­ten­tion is suf­fi­cient.

There are dif­fer­ent types of recharg­ers on the mar­ket, with prices from 700 to 1,400 euros, which allow car bat­ter­ies to be recharged overnight. In an emer­gency, there are pub­lic charg­ing points that are free to use and that, with fast charg­ing points, allow bat­ter­ies to be charged in a mat­ter of min­utes.

As for the dif­fer­ent recharg­ing points, con­ven­tional types use sin­gle-phase elec­tric power of 230V with a max­i­mum power level in the re­gion of 3,7 kW, suit­able for do­mes­tic in­stal­la­tion. Charg­ing by these de­vices takes some eight hours de­pend­ing on the ca­pac­ity of the ve­hi­cle's bat­tery. Semi-fast charg­ing points use three-phase elec­tric power (380V) with a 43 kW power level and a charg­ing time of one to three hours. Charg­ing at power lev­els above 40 kW, be­tween 50 kW and 100 kW, al­lows bat­ter­ies to be charged to 65% in a quar­ter of an hour and to 80% in 20 min­utes. Yet, charg­ing at these lev­els was con­ceived for emer­gen­cies and bat­tery man­u­fac­tur­ers say abus­ing this type of charg­ing can re­duce bat­tery life. More­over, to charge at this rate re­quires spe­cial con­nec­tors.

“We are work­ing to bring fast-charg­ing points to more places around the coun­try,” says Mercè Rius, di­rec­tor of the Cata­lan en­ergy in­sti­tute ICAEN, which recog­nises that the fear of bat­ter­ies run­ning out is a main rea­son why peo­ple are wary of adopt­ing this tech­nol­ogy.

How­ever, the Cata­lan gov­ern­ment has a range of sub­si­dies on offer to en­cour­age the in­stal­la­tion of fast charg­ing points: “Barcelona and its sur­round­ing area are well cov­ered, but there is still a lot of areas still to cover,” con­cludes Rius.