ZAP licenses electric car charging technology from Pacific Northwest National Lab

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The ZAP Xebra

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory announced Wednesday the first, non-exclusive license of its Smart Charger Controller technology to electric car company ZAP.

The technology, developed at the Richland, Wash.-based lab, minimizes the cost of charging electric vehicles by recharging the vehicles battery at times when demand on the power grid is low.

“If a million owners plug in their electric vehicles to recharge after work, it could cause a major strain on the grid,” said PNNL engineer Michael Kintner-Meyer in a press release. “The Smart Charger Controller technology could prevent those peaks in demand from plug-in vehicles and enable our existing grid to be used more evenly.”

Battelle, the science and technology company that manages and operates PNNL for the U.S. Department of Energy, also has granted ZAP the right to sub-license the technology to ZAP Hangzhou, joint venture with Holley Group focused on electric vehicle and grid infrastructure technology.

ZAP, of Santa Rosa, Calif., sells a variety of electric vehicles including scooters, three-wheeled cars and light-duty trucks. ZAP plans to distribute the new technology as part of its electric vehicle business plan, including through its strategic investor and distribution partner Samyang Optics of Korea.

PNNL publicly announced the charger technology last year after completing an assessment that showed the existing power grid could meet the needs of about 158 million vehicles, or 70 percent of all U.S. light-duty vehicles, if battery charging was managed to avoid new peaks in electricity demand.

PNNL, which is leading the $178 million Pacific Northwest Smart Grid Demonstration Project, has spent a lot of time studying the use of “smart” technologies and their potential impact on the grid. For example, if household appliances had charger controllers that could sense stress conditions on the grid and temporarily stop charging, the grid could avoid brown-out conditions with little impact on consumers.

ZAP officials intend to use the technology for its electric car charging program in the USA, Korea and through its partner in China, ZAP Hangzhou, later in 2010.