TEQCharging: Power Management System for Electric Vehicle Chargers

Georgia Tech mechanical engineering students co-founded TEQ Charging, a startup that invented a power strip that allows multiple electric vehicles to be recharged by a single charging point. TEQ Charging is one of six competition finalists in Georgia Tech's 2016 InVenture Prize Competition. Their power management system for electric vehicle chargers reduces the cost of installation, increases the efficiency of charging, and therefore, provides greater accessibility to charging. The team's algorithm and hardware design eliminates the need to run a separate power line to each individual charger.

Transcript

00:00:00 We are Tech Charging, and we are a power strip for electric vehicles. Why are there only ever two or three chargers in a parking lot? And the answer is because parking lots don't have a lot of power infrastructure, and power infrastructure is expensive. And that's where Tech Charging comes in. So using our technology and some off-the-shelf hardware,

00:00:22 we essentially make a power strip where each car pulls into a space and has its own charger, and the charger charges the first car as they're all parked. When that's done, it turns off, and it charges the second car, and then on down the line. And that means that where before, an office or an apartment might be able to have two chargers, with us, they can have 10 or 15. Our goal over the next year is to build

00:00:47 a network of 250-some plugs in the Midtown Atlanta area. What Inventerprise will give us is a little bit of capital to get that project started, but more importantly, the validation and the visibility to go out to buildings through the Midtown area and start installing these chargers.