Emporia Energy Partners with BREK Electronics to Develop Bi-Directional EV Charger

LITTLETON, Colo. – (February 2, 2022) – This month, Emporia Energy, an energy management technology company specializing in affordable, energy-saving smart home products, and BREK Electronics, a power electronics company revolutionizing the industry with its innovative silicon-carbide-based inverter platform, announce their new partnership to develop a bi-directional electric vehicle charger. The development and licensing relationship will combine BREK and Emporia’s technologies to create an EV Charger that will not only transfer power from the grid and home to the vehicle, but also from the vehicle back to the home and grid. This product will be the first of its kind available in North America and is predicted to hit the market in 2023 at less than $1,500.

The collaboration brings together the specialties of both companies, with BREK developing the power electronics core and hardware, and Emporia developing the connector strategy and smart home integration system. BREK and Emporia also share an overarching mission of providing accessible and affordable products that is foundational to this development partnership.

Emporia, led by founder and CEO Shawn McLaughlin, already offers a line of energy management technology products that can be combined to create the Emporia Smart Home Energy Management System. These products include level 2 EV chargers, customizable whole-home batteries with capacity from 8.2kWh to 49.2 kWh, smart plugs, and real-time energy monitors that allow users to assess and control their total home energy usage in real-time via the Emporia app. The partnership’s bi-directional EV Charger will be the newest addition to this ecosystem and give customers new options for power management. Consumers will now be able to power their home through their EV, insulating them from costly utility bills and protecting them from power outages.

BREK is reimagining Silicon-Carbide based power electronics technologies. BREK’s Silicon-Carbide based platform has a variety of applications, including solar string inverters that can provide significantly higher power at lower cost with longer life, in a more compact design than existing commercial string inverters. BREK’s and Emporia’s collaboration will develop and adapt this hardware specifically for bi-directional EV charging.

As explained by McLaughlin, “80 to 85% of electric vehicle charging currently takes place at the vehicle owner’s home, so the EV should really be seen as an extension of the home energy system. This is critical to why we want to make a bi-directional EV charger readily available – being able to transfer energy from the vehicle back into the home or grid will enable widespread adoption of distributed renewable energy without taxing the grid, while generating substantial savings for the homeowner, but there isn’t a cost effective option on the market yet. Our collaboration with BREK will create that option.”

“This is an ideal partnership for us,” Dr. Kala Majeti, President and Co-founder of BREK Electronics said. “Emporia has mastered energy management technology and smart home integration with their system of products and is the perfect match for the power electronics development we do here at BREK. Our hardware expertise combined with Emporia’s experience in energy management will drive the creation of a truly groundbreaking product in the EV charging space.”

For more information about Emporia, visit www.emporiaenergy.com. To learn more about BREK Electronics, visit www.brekelectronics.com.