What is the difference between AC charging piles and DC charging piles for new energy vehicles?
AC car charging piles also have high power, why the market still wants to do DC?
The most essential difference between AC charging piles and DC charging piles is the degree of participation of on-board equipment during charging.
The AC charging pile is like a pair of chopsticks. It delivers food to the mouth, but chewing, swallowing, digestion, and absorption have to be done by the person himself. And the DC charging pile is like playing glucose to hang water, pumping energy into the human body, and it can be used directly without the human body doing anything else.
The AC charging pile is actually a socket , which connects the vehicle with AC power, but the high-voltage battery can only store DC power, so the "vehicle charger" on the car is needed to convert AC power into DC power, and then store it in the battery. Therefore, the power of the AC charging pile is limited by the power of the on-board charger. Considering the limitations of the vehicle, the volume and weight of the on-board charger are restricted, and the power cannot be too large, so the power of the AC charging pile is generally not large. , generally more than ten kilowatts. In addition, the on-board charger installed on low-end new energy vehicles is actually a kind of AC charging pile, and its power generally does not exceed 5Kw.
The essence of the DC charging pile is to integrate the on-board charger and the AC charging pile . Because the charger is fixed, there is no need to consider factors such as volume and weight, and the power can be made very large. The input of the DC charging pile to the vehicle is directly the DC power required by the battery, and there is no need for the vehicle to convert it. Therefore, the maximum power of the current DC pile can reach more than 200 kilowatts.
Because of the difference between the two types of piles, the charging gun interfaces of DC piles and AC piles in the national standard are also different. Intuitively, the DC gun has 9 sockets, while the AC pile has only 7 sockets.
From the difference in the maximum power of the AC and DC charging piles above, it can be seen that the biggest advantage of DC is that it is fast . Fast charging means that the time for the vehicle to wait for charging is short, and the use of the vehicle is more convenient. For the operating units of charging stations, they charge service fees based on the amount of charging. If the DC pile can charge 100 kWh per hour, and the AC pile can charge 15 kWh per hour, then the service fee will be a 6-fold difference. , so the market is still dominated by DC piles, while household use is dominated by AC piles.