Project Introduction:
Building a low-carbon economy has become a key measure in tackling the challenges of climate change. In many countries, policies and plans have been established for transitioning to a low-carbon economy. One of the key strategic tools for this transition is Electronic Vehicles (EVs) which, in recent years, have gained mainstream attention as viable alternatives to gasoline-powered cars.

In Hong Kong, the government is continuously identifying possible ways to encourage vehicle owners to use cleaner alternative fuel vehicles. Its pro-active approach for promoting the use of electric vehicles is to cooperate with developers to set up the EV charging facilities. Until now, there have been a few EV charging stations in place across Hong Kong thereby developing a network of charging stations at conveniently located public places.

System Requirements: In order to promote low carbon living, last year, the Hong Kong government introduced EV Charging Stations. The charging pole provides three kinds of plugs, to fit different vehicles, for charging and due to fast-charging battery technology it only takes 2 to 8 hours to be fully charged. The pole is attached to a touch screen with a graphical user interface and card payment system to allow users to pay in multiple ways.

To meet the specifications for human machine interaction, the charging equipment needs a variety of I/O modules to acquire meter data and control the various switches as well as managing the power grid to charge and discharge. The whole system also needs a reliable and low-cost IPC platform which needs to provide an optical interface to connect the EV Charging Stations to complete the charging.

System Description:
Based on the system requirements, Advantech provided a stable low-cost 10.4" touch panel computer - TPC-1250H - as the charging system host to control the three charging sockets. Each socket is attached to an EKI-1521 to acquire the meter dataand an ADAM-6052 to the control various switches. The EKI-1521 is a 1-port RS-232/422/485 Serial Device Server and features two independent Ethernet ports and MAC addresses to provide a redundant network mechanism to guarantee Ethernet network reliability.

With 8 digital inputs and 8 digital outputs, the ADAM-6052 is suitable for any other type of low current applications that need to be carefully controlled. Regarding reliability, ADAM-6052’s built-in communication watchdog and network failure safety functions can reset the outputs to pre-configured values if network failure occurs.

The TPC-1070H easily connects all devices in the charging pole via Advantech’s EKI-7626C which is an industrial Ethernet switch and provides 2Gb fiber optic/copper combo ports to interconnect the system and the charging station network via fiber optic network. The EKI-7626C is also equipped with 16 x 10/100 Base-TX fast Ethernet ports to ensure further expansion.

By being connected to the USB-4761 data acquisition module, the TPC-1070H can control the buttons, switches and light signals in the master control box. With the features of easy installation and lockablecable mechanism, the USB-4761 is a reliable 8-ch relay and 8-ch isolated digital input USB module as well as featuring an isolation protection for rugged applications.

Conclusion:
Reliability is always a priority with Advantech products, and our platform for this case is no exception. It is a reliable, compact and easy to wire solution as well as eliminating the compatibility issues because all devices are manufactured by Advantech. We also helped our clients build up acomplete set of hardware facilities in a very short period of time enabling them to focus ontheir software development.

To further encourage commuters to experience and enjoy the benefits of EV charging in Hong Kong, local power companies have extended the promotion period of free EV charging at all their charging stations whilst also setting up the stations with Advantech’s solution to support the wider use of EVs.