Principal investigator: Liang Du and Xiaonan Lu

University: Temple University

Industry partner: Bender Inc.

The accelerating paradigm shift to electrified transportation brings a significant boost to our economy and creates 250,000 domestic, high-quality jobs before 2030 in manufacturing, e-mobility, freight trucking, transit, supply chain, and infrastructures. Temple University, in collaboration with Bender Inc, the global leader in electrical solutions for hospitals, mining, automation, chemical industries, transportation, and renewable energy (with its N.A. HQ & engineering centers in Exton, PA), proposes to enhancing Bender’s world-class EV charging controllers and developing next-generation, software-integrated controllers in PA to

  • Managing Vehicle-to-Grid and Grid-to-Vehicle operations: EVs are operated as flexible loads and energy storage to reduce cost and enhance grid reliability, in respond to real-time electricity prices from Pennsylvania-New Jersey-Maryland Interconnections, a regional transmission organization that oversees power transmission for 13 states plus DC, 65 million customers, and 21% of the U.S. GDP.
  • Conducting load analysis and condition monitoring: the team will utilize electrical measurements to analyze and monitor the charging process. Data-driven analytics will be conducted in the manner of edge-computing at the controller, and thus significant detected events will be communicated to the user for proactive alerts.
  • Developing software-defined transactive applications: a software layer will be designed on top of a network of EV charging controllers to enable data exchange and application-specific tasks. The proposed controller will actively authenticate financial transactions (either payment to others for energy consumption or from others for service/energy provided).

As its N.A. HQ founded in 1983, Bender Inc. is currently staffed with 80-100 experts in Exton, PA and provides comprehensive products and state-of-the-art manufacturing facilities to not only PA but also over 70 countries, with potential addition of a 19,200 sq ft facility in western Chester County. This project will support ongoing collaboration between Temple and Bender to develop next-generation technologies and potentially create more EV-specific manufacturing jobs in PA.