Rob Croson
Elio Addict
Bullpuckey.Chargers capable of doing this have already been installed...it's not difficult to do.
100 amps at 220 VAC only supplies 22kW. To charge a 60kW battery takes three hours. This is simple math and electrical theory.
I x E = P
I = current in amps
E = voltage in volts
P = power in watts
100 amps x 220 volts = 22,000 watts or 22kW
Do that for one hour straight, and you get 22kWh, (22 kilowatt hours). A Tesla Model 3 comes with an about 50kWh battery.) Tesla hasn't revealed an exact figure, so far as I know.) Even ignoring losses due to inefficiency, that's the next best thing to 2.5 hours to charge. figuring an 80% efficiency conversion of 220VAC into battery charge, that's almost three hours.
If your house has 200 amp service, and you were somehow able to channel all 200 amps of that through your charging socket without melting your charging cable, that's still only a 44kWh charge in an hour. To get that down to 20 minutes, you'd have to bump the current all the way up to a whopping 700 amps! your alternative is to go to a 480 VAC power connection. At 480 VAC you could do it with 350 amps. But I don't think you understand the implication of those numbers. A flexible cable to carry that kind of power is almost as thick as a person's thigh.
I understand that there are batteries capable of accepting current at that rate, when the 9,000 amp charging current is many individual cells. And that there are rectifiers capable of converting that massive power draw from AC to DC to generate those 9,000 charging amps. But no normal home electrical connection can carry that kind of power.
So you know that I'm not just spewing crap out of my ass, if you care, I am a Navy trained industrial electrician. I was in charge of generating this kind of power, and operating and maintaining the switchgear that distributed this kind of power on a nuclear submarine. I know this shit.
Read up on the Tesla supercharger network and you will find the tech specs to back this up: http://www.teslamotors.wiki/wiki/Supercharger
For those of a technical bent, here’s how a typical Supercharger (in this case, the one at Port St Lucie, FL) is configured: the eight bay setup, like the one shown on the first page of this chapter, takes a 12 kV, 750 kVA feed from the Utility, steps it down to 480V three phase on site, pushes that into 2000A switchgear which feeds four banks of Supercharger (SC) units (one for each pair of “pods”) at 480V/200A. Each unit contains twelve 10 kW rectifiers (the same “charger” that is found in Model S) giving a total of 120 kW per pair of pods.
There they are talking about 480 VAC at 2,000 amps, for 8 bays. I worked out 350 amps, which scaled up to 8 bays would be 2,800 amps. A bit over their numbers, but not too far out, considering I didn't get into the mechanics of three-phase power, which is more efficient, and can pump more power down the same line. They are using 120kW rectifiers for two bays, which is 60kW per bay. A Model S has a 60kW battery, right? So that's one hour for a full charge, if you pump the full power into it, for that full time. A Tesla model S has a range of 315 miles. Tesla claims to be able to push 200 miles into the battery in 30 minutes. So nearly 50 minutes for a full charge., Which approximately matches the 60kW rectifier capacity to the 60kW battery capacity.
All this talk of miracle batteries with super-fast charge times is great. For your cell phone. But the laws of physics mandate that power in = power out. If you want to charge a 60kWh battery, you have to put 60kWh into it. And you can't do that in 20 minutes by plugging your car into that itty-bitty 120VAC plug in your garage. And if you want to be able to charge your Model 3 in less than 2.5 hours in your garage, you're going to have to call the electric company and convince them that you need industrial scale three phase 480VAC wired into your garage. Because that's the only way you're going to charge it faster.