• fhqwgads@possumpat.io
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    1 year ago

    I don’t think the intention is for the average home to charge at these rates, but rather for charging stations to be faster. In large part even with 350kw DC fast charging stations (which already exist) the battery is the limiting factor, not the charger.

    Essentially, yes these would kind of only be installed at electrical sub stations.

    • j4k3@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      The stations that are already capable of 350kW must be using additional on site static storage that is able to supply this kind of power. Otherwise, it is junk marketing of design capacity and safety margins instead of real world limitations. Most homes in the USA have 240V with a 100A main breaker, and only if the home/local grid is relatively modern. Many homes only have 40A or 60A main breakers. It is impossible for 240V/100A to exceed 24kW under any circumstances other than breaking the physics of the entire universe. The only way to supply more power is to add local storage. 350kW is a lot of storage and engineering in practice to deliver. I’m willing to bet most of these setups are not performing anywhere near this. Heck any old average wall wort from your junk drawer will have a full bridge rectifier with 4× 1N4007 diodes. Those are rated at 1kV at 1A. By modern marketing standards they’d call that a 4A 4kV power supply. In the real world, that thing is pumping a massive 500mA at 5V and those diodes are probably still going to fail eventually.

      Watts are the hard power limit that can’t be changed. The volts and current can seesaw against each other in a converter or transformer, but the combination can never alter the total available watts. Most people are not going to be able to buy an electric vehicle AND a massive static local supply source capable of high current output.

      If you want centralized infrastructure, the scale of local storage is massive, nearly as much as everyone’s home solution combined, or it involves extremely high voltage distribution lines with extremely skilled labor managing it, or lots of dead people. I doubt the distribution line infrastructure can handle the types of loading that such random high current loads would induce. It would probably require massive local buffering infrastructure like momentum wheels to maintain the grid specification while multiple batteries are simultaneously charged at random. Any infrastructure requiring additional local storage must also justify itself against the fact that all of the EV batteries are not economically recyclable. Doubling the battery count for more convenient charging is just exchanging one environmental catastrophe with fossil fuel for another, even more so than it is already.

      • fhqwgads@possumpat.io
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        1 year ago

        Again, large DC fast chargers are not for individual homes. Home 240v EVSEs run about 5-10kw and cost $500ish.

        350kw chargers do exist and are not just marketing - they just aren’t being installed normal people’s houses. Here’s a DC fast charger for sale:

        https://www.power-sonic.com/product/evdc-360na/

        It uses 480v three phase at up to 440a to accomplish it. No one is going to get that in a residential setting. The unit itself probably costs on the order of $200k, and that wouldn’t include the construction of the site or any installation costs from the electrical company.