Charging Station

Charging Station

An electric vehicle charging station, also called EV charging station, electric recharging point, charging point and EVSE (Electric Vehicle Supply Equipment), is an element in an infrastructure that supplies electric energy for the recharging of plug-in electric vehicles, including all-electric cars, neighborhood electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids. As of October 2012, the United States had 13,967 public charging units, of which 3,472 were located in California. As of November 2012, about 15,000 charging stations had been installed in Europe, of which, Norway, the world's leader in electric car ownership per capita, had 3,708 free public charging points through November 2012. As of December 2011, Japan had 800 public quick-charge stations, and China only 168 public charging stations.

As plug-in hybrid electric vehicles and battery electric vehicle ownership is expanding, there is a growing need for widely distributed publicly accessible charging stations, some of which support faster charging at higher voltages and currents than are available from domestic supplies. Many charging stations are on-street facilities provided by electric utility companies, mobile charging stations have been recently introduced. Some of these special charging stations provide one or a range of heavy duty or special connectors and/or charging without a physical connection using parking places equipped with inductive charging mats.