American Company Develops World's First Solar and Wind-Powered EV Charger

<p style="text-align: center;"><img src="/ueditor/php/upload/image/20220314/1647238245921009.jpg" title="1647238245921009.jpg" alt="6.jpg"/></p><p style="text-align: justify;">An American company has presented a device that is meant to offer a solution to installing more EV chargers in places where the electrical grid is not in stellar condition. Called Wind &amp; Solar Tower, the unit is a station that combines wind energy and solar energy, thus two types of renewable energy, with a megawatt battery and six EV quick-charging posts.</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><br/></p><p style="text-align: justify;">The entire system is 82-feet (24.9 meters) tall, but only occupies two square meters (21.5 square feet) of ground for itself, and it is imagined to have six charging points installed.&nbsp;<br/><br/>Those points are meant to allow the simultaneous charging of six&nbsp;EVs with up to 20&nbsp;kW&nbsp;each. Its inventor initially set out to improve traditional wind turbines for farm use, but decided to use their skills to provide a solution to a different problem.&nbsp;<br/><br/>As Jim Bardia explained, conventional wind turbines are not efficient at generating power if they face gentle gusts of wind, so he first worked on a way to improve those. Both the Vertical Axis Wind Turbines and the Horizontal Axis Wind Turbines were examined. The company, Change Wind Corporation, decided to go for a distinctive design.&nbsp;<br/><br/>Eventually, he and his development team, which included friends and colleagues with whom he shared experience in motorsport, managed to build a model that could achieve that goal. The first model was deployed for five years in Pennsylvania, where it survived two&nbsp;hurricanes.&nbsp;<br/><br/>According to the inventor, the Wind and Solar Tower is more effective than conventional wind turbines due to its use of powerful permanent magnets, which are deployed within a <a href="http://www.unim-inc.com/products/Wheel-Hub-Bearing/6.html" target="_blank"><strong>wheel hub bearing</strong></a>. The idea is that technology eliminates contact between moving parts, as well as reduces friction, which means an increase in the electrical output curve of the installation.&nbsp;</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><br/>For further optimization, these towers were equipped with a multi-speed sequential gearbox, which is operated by a computer and helps generate electricity in wind speeds as low as 5 mph (ca. 8 kph), but also works in wind speeds as high as 75 mph (ca. 121 kph). Both existing turbine technologies cannot operate under the described conditions, Change Wind Corporation claims.&nbsp;<br/><br/>When not charging an electric vehicle, the energy generated from the new type of wind turbine is stored into an on-site battery array that has a capacity of 1,000 kW (one megawatt). Otherwise, excess energy is sent into the grid. Unlike other wind turbines, this tower also&nbsp;integrates a solar panel,&nbsp;which has a self-cleaning function for optimal performance.<br/><br/>We should note that other wind turbines have been adapted to charge vehicles before, while other companies have developed&nbsp;solutions to store renewable energy&nbsp;for later use. There are also solar-powered&nbsp;EV&nbsp;chargers out there, but none of the systems we know of have combined all these ideas into a single unit, as is the case with the Wind &amp; Solar Tower.&nbsp;<br/><br/>According to its creators, the WST can generate 169,000&nbsp;kilowatt-hours of non-polluting electricity each year, and the resulting resource may be used for over 600,000 miles (ca. 965,606 km) of pollution-free driving. That is the best-case scenario, where up to 8,400 EVs are topped-up each year from the tower, which allows for up to six vehicles to be charged at the same time.&nbsp;<br/></p>