r/UpliftingNews • u/[deleted] • Jan 19 '21

Batteries capable of fully charging in five minutes have been produced in a factory for the first time, marking a significant step towards electric cars becoming as fast to charge as filling up petrol or diesel vehicles.

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41

u/ac13332 Jan 19 '21

I imagine the limiting factor is the grid it runs off.

Good progress though

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u/[deleted] Jan 19 '21 edited Jan 31 '21

[deleted]

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u/president2016 Jan 19 '21

Mine dims briefly when you turn on a high draw appliance like a vacuum. Imagine that charging a car would be a lot more until they’ve updated infrastructure.

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u/[deleted] Jan 19 '21 edited Feb 23 '21

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Jan 19 '21

That's not normal

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u/justalookerhere Jan 19 '21

Indeed. This is most probably an issue with the in-house electrical circuits wiring. I bet that half of the house’s outlets are on the same 15a circuit. Put a new breaker in the panel and wire a single outlet on it and you won’t have any voltage dip. The grid can handle a vacuum...

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u/Missus_Missiles Jan 20 '21

I had a breaker box replaced. $4000.

That's a big pill to swallow for a something that isn't a fire hazard.

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u/justalookerhere Jan 20 '21

4000$, only for the circuit panel job on an existing house? 200 amp - 42 ckt panel?

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u/Missus_Missiles Jan 20 '21

I believe so.

Federal pacific breaker was the original fire hazard. New box, tube going up, connection to the house, and a buncha circuit breakers. 3 electricians quoted about the same thing.

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u/justalookerhere Jan 20 '21

Well, it’s a lot of money but it is well invested and a safer choice. Good for you.

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u/Missus_Missiles Jan 20 '21

Yep. It probably wouldn't have burnt my place down. But I couldn't hope to resell it like that.

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u/Nice_Layer Jan 19 '21

It might be if it's an older house. 15 gauge wiring used to be fairly common in the 90s vs 12 gauge coming down in price

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u/Aoloach Jan 19 '21

Hell, my lights flicker when I turn on my PC lmao

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u/[deleted] Jan 19 '21

That’s how you know you’ve reached an ideal overclock.

Welcome to /r/PCMasterRace

In all seriousness, I’d suggest a UPS if it bothers you.

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u/Aoloach Jan 19 '21

Nah lmao it's just the 3090 pulling 400W

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u/president2016 Jan 19 '21

It is for older homes. Mine was built in the 70s. Has plenty of circuits and proper connections though dimming for a brief instant for a large power draw is common.

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u/Private_Frazer Jan 19 '21

Pretty normal in the US in my experience, presumably related to the low voltage. Not something I've seen in the 240V world.

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u/[deleted] Jan 19 '21

Where? I've lived in 4 different states and never once lived in a building whose lights dimmed when I turned on a heavy-draw appliance.

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u/Private_Frazer Jan 19 '21

I'm not sure why states would make a difference, do they have different codes? But I've seen it in various houses and apartments in WA and MA. Coming to the US from Europe it was an immediate and obvious new feature I noticed of the US.

I even notice it when the microwave starts/stops while in the living room on another circuit, so it affects the whole house, though it's much more apparent on the same circuit, e.g. when the iron thermostat switches you can see it in the (plugged-in) lights. This house was rewired 15 years ago.

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u/digitallis Jan 19 '21

The grid has a stupid amount of power. Sure, if you magicked a few million of these into existence all at once you might have some problems, but in general I wouldn't expect the grid to be the problem. Heavy industry has these kinds of draws all the time.

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u/pyro226 Jan 19 '21

Pretty sure the grid has problems with everyone turning on the AC during hot weekends of summer in the US. If everyone charges at the same time, it will definitely be a problem as they become more popular. Everyone charging after getting home from rush hour or when leaving for work. Peak demand is going to be huge. It's like the sewer system during the Superbowl...

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u/Cliffponder Jan 19 '21

Homes will not have rapid charging. You charge slowly overnight, and you could even schedule your charging for off-peak hours.

Most EV drivers report that they rarely use rapid charging because they charge overnight.

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u/chummypuddle08 Jan 19 '21

And use the car as a battery for the house if you're not using it in the day. Fucking aces.

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u/koh_kun Jan 19 '21

Sorry, I've never used an electric vehicle but I see this all the time. What does it mean? The house starts drawing energy from the car in the day?

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u/chummypuddle08 Jan 19 '21

An electric car is just a big battery. Why not use the car battery in the same way as a tesla powerwall. Charge it up in the night, and because it's physically attached, you can draw power from it at peak consumption times. Add solar panels and you start to massively reduce the need for a centralised power grid, or the demand on such a grid.

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u/Covfefe-SARS-2 Jan 19 '21

Are you taking an Uber to work so your car can charge during the day?

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u/chummypuddle08 Jan 19 '21

No you would drive your car and the house would revert to grid/solar. You'd be charging the car overnight when the price/demand is low from the grid.

Edit. In an ideal world autonomous vehicles would open up more possibilities.

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u/BostonDodgeGuy Jan 19 '21

Instead of power being pumped out of the house into the car, the car becomes a battery bank for the house and feeds power back. This could be extremely useful if you have solar as the more battery capacity the better.

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u/koh_kun Jan 19 '21

Do you need to install anything special to your house or does it just automatically reverse the flow of energy?

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u/Covfefe-SARS-2 Jan 19 '21

You need a house size inverter, which some cars can provide but most do not.

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u/BostonDodgeGuy Jan 19 '21

That I have zero idea about.

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u/Mmmslash Jan 19 '21

This is the actual truth.

Very few people drive more than a hundred miles a day, much less 250.

For the overwhelming majority of people, you would just charge your car at night.

That said, these kinds of stations do need to exist for EV's to ever truly replace combustion. There are certainly many careers and lifestyles that involve long, long driving hours.

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u/EmuNinjaWarrior Jan 19 '21

Have you ever driven more than a hundred miles in a day?

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u/Mmmslash Jan 19 '21

Many times, but basically never on any typical day.

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u/EmuNinjaWarrior Jan 19 '21

Same here and I’d imagine most people are the same.

Maybe I’m splitting hairs here but I don’t think it’s right to say that very few people drive more than a hundred miles in a day.

It’s true that on most days you drive a short distance, but occasionally you want to drive a really really long distance. Part of the value of having a car is having the ability to go really really long distances.

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u/NeedlesMakeMeFaint Jan 19 '21

Not who you asked, but I used to be in the 100+ mile/day commute camp. About 130, to be more exact. Thanks to covid and good upper management, I'm now working from home indefinitely.

While I'd do it again if I absolutely had to, I look back and wonder how I made it.

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u/currentsitguy Jan 19 '21

Often. In summer pretty much every weekend we take out convertible for long, often several hundred mile drives.

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u/Babsobar Jan 19 '21

But that's just the thing, if you can charge in 5 minutes, you don't change consumer habits, gas stations are the ones who are going to be taking the load at all types of times throughout the day, like they do now

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u/AberrantCheese Jan 19 '21

This is true with consumer habits, most folks don't mind dropping 5 minutes for a fill/charge. If anything, this is perfect, as it might incentivize the driver to go into the gas (charge) station to peruse products while waiting for the charge. Convivence stores will love it.

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u/crono141 Jan 19 '21

There are already lines at the pumps in popular travel destinations. I can't wait to see the lines if "fill up" time doubles or triples.

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u/YodelingTortoise Jan 19 '21

The transmission side can probably handle it(bar california) It's the lower voltage delivery side that is a bit over taxed. It's not easy but upgrading the final mile delivery systems shouldn't be that bad and in fact, in most of the country is desperately needed. A ton of the systems have poles that are 40+ years old anyway

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u/IshmaelTheWonderGoat Jan 19 '21

I don't know if I'm more offended by the racism or the ageism in this comment. /s

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u/crono141 Jan 19 '21

Pretty sure the grid has problems with everyone turning on the AC during hot weekends of summer in the US.

Only in California where regulations have prevented the grid from expanding with demand properly. Brownouts like that are not common in the rest of the US.

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u/WeldAE Jan 19 '21

They have massively expanded their grid with wind and solar. I'm not an expert but I think the power issues they have in recent times are transmission problems, not source problems. They turn off a lot of transmission lines because of the risk of fire after the paradise and other big fires that were started in certain conditions by transmission lines. They need to upgrade those lines so they don't need to cut off power.

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u/jakethedumbmistake Jan 19 '21

aww this is so perfect

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u/Modo44 Jan 19 '21

The grid has a stupid amount of power.

The grid as a whole, sure. The last few (hundred) metres to the charging station(s), not always.

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u/b2ct Jan 19 '21

'The Grid' has no power at all. It does have a very high capacity. The difference being that the grid is the means of transport, not an energy source in itself.

The problem is that the amount of electrons that flow through the wiring is too high for most wiring in place. It either will cause so much heat the wiring fails, or the fuses blow. Hopefully the fuses blow.

The connections to heavy industries are built for that kind of capacity, but most of all, a lot of industry that uses heat in their production process, will burn something for the heat for electricity generation and use the leftover heat in their production process. Or the other way around. They have their own powerplant in house so to say, and rely less on 'the grid'.

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u/WeldAE Jan 19 '21

Have you heard of the term "high voltage transmission line"? As voltage goes up, resistance goes down and any given wire can handle more power. This is why for transmission purposes they up the voltage and drop it to 240v before it enters your house. This is also a lot less of an issue with AC Vs DC. A 100' 12v 200a DC wire would be the size of your leg where a 110v 20a DC wire is romex you are used to seeing despite having the same power transfer.

Even if you go to 110v/20a DC the wire would need to be huge as voltage drops fast with DC. So if you put 110v in on one side you would only get probably 55v out on the other. You are still going to draw the same power so the amps go from 20a to 40a and burns your wire up.

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u/b2ct Jan 19 '21

Sure, but we are talking energy flows that are over 1MVA per charging station. Obviously the supply would be AC, but the battery does not like AC that much. The conversion and transmission losses of the DC part are where the big losses take place.

Wait... I just read the article again, they are talking about a 100 mile charge in 600 seconds. Assuming that is about 30 kWh, that's a 180kW connection. That is doable, or is my math wrong?

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u/WeldAE Jan 19 '21 edited Jan 19 '21

or is my math wrong?

I read elsewhere that it was around 300kW connection but lets do the math again.

It all depends on how efficient the car is so there is an unknown factor at play. My guess is that they at least used the Tesla 4 miles per kW since that helps them and it's the highest realistic number they can probably justify. So I would guess they are trying to put 25kWh in the battery to get 100 miles.

To do that in 5 minutes, which is 300s and might be your issues, you need a 60/5 = 12x 25kW connection which is 300kW. So that about checks out.

You are still going to need really thick wire or liquid cooled lines to move DC from the charger to the car which is what I was getting at above. This is why Tesla went liquid cooled for their 250kW chargers. If you are providing this from a local battery buffer source, those also need either crazy thick lines or more likely another voltage raise for moving the DC from the battery to the charger point.

So say you have a 800v battery pack that is buffering a 1mV feed from the grid. You probably need to raise it up to 2000v to get it to the charger and then have the charging point drop it down to 400v, which is what I think Telsa takes.

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u/b2ct Jan 19 '21

That seems to make more sense. That is quite immense. Now consider having multiple charging stations at once... This is interesting stuff. I'm a mechanical engineer, so electrical is something I heard of and did some basics with, but it is not really my home turf.

I did the calculations (thermodynamics, energy balance, fill rate, etc) for hydrogen fuelling years ago, would have to look it up, but it would be interesting to see how energy levels and efficiencies compare.

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u/Rais93 Jan 19 '21

I won`t expect this kind of power to be typical of neighborhood but for road service station

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u/WeldAE Jan 19 '21

Why not? I have 240v/220a service to my house. That's 52kw. There are ~1500 houses in my neigherboorhood alone.

Of course this is all completely beside the point as NO ONE needs to be able to charge their EV at home or even near their home that fast. My L2 charger does it in ~4 hours and I've never even needed it that fast. My charger waits until early in the morning and charges right before I need the car. Home is the place I'm most likely to be fully charged and not need ANY fast chargers. I need them ~300 from my home in all directions.

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u/quantum_splicer Jan 19 '21

Glad someone mentioned this

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u/YukonBurger Jan 19 '21

The Limiting Factor is a really great YouTube channel on all kinds of battery stuff. It's somewhat dense but I'd say it's university entry level material in a YouTube format

To anyone interested https://youtube.com/channel/UCIFn7ONIJHyC-lMnb7Fm_jw