Colloquia

Samenvatting

Electric vehicles (EVs) are an increasingly important alternative to fuel-based cars in the pursuit of net carbon neutrality within the mobility sector. A key factor in the success of EVs in Europe is the availability of a reliable and accessible public charging infrastructure. However, the development of electric vehicle supply equipment (EVSE) remains challenging, both because of varying local regulations and because of still rapidly evolving legislation and market developments. Alfen, the largest EVSE manufacturer in the Netherlands, currently requires a high level of engineering effort to keep its EVSE products up to date. This project addresses these challenges by investigating how a next-generation public EVSE can be designed to better accommodate regional variance and future design changes.

To address these challenges, a System Engineering approach is used. Within the System Engineering approach, a general methodology is designed to analyze the system architecture of an existing product and develop a new system architecture. This methodology is then applied to first analyze Alfens' existing public EVSE product, the Twin. The ARCADIA framework is used to make dependencies between components and design decisions from the past explicit. Stakeholder analysis, regional variance analysis and a study into EVSE market developments result in a list of eight challenges that must be overcome in the design of the next-generation public EVSE system architecture.

To develop a new system architecture that improves on these challenges, a literature review is performed on design for variety and modularization. This review discusses insights into selecting an appropriate level of modularization and identifies six relevant modularity principles. Furthermore, a set of tools is presented to help the architecture design process, such as the Design Structure Matrix (DSM) and the Tree of Variance.

Using the identified principles and tools from literature, a system architecture on a Physical, Logical and System need Level is developed. The resulting architecture introduces a higher level of modularization and a clearer separation of variable and standardized modules in the system. Because of this, the system is better adaptable to regional differences and uncertain future requirements. 

This project has shown how system architecture and modular design principles can help to reduce design complexity and engineering effort for a public EVSE product. The proposed system architecture will form the foundation of the development of a new public EVSE platform for Alfen.