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Gov't Researchers Develop Wireless Car Chargers That Are Faster Than Plug-ins (computerworld.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the government-research dept.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Computerworld: The U.S. Department of Energy has demonstrated a 20,000 watt (20KW) wireless car-charging system that offers three times the efficiency of today's plug-in systems for electric vehicles (EVs). The research is the first step in creating a 50KW wireless charging system that may someday allow roadways to charge vehicles while they are being driven. The DOE's Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) in Tennessee demonstrated the new system in partnership with Toyota, Cisco Systems, Evatran and the Clemson University International Center for Automotive Research. ORNL said the 20KW charging system for passenger cars is the world's highest power wireless system. It was developed in less than three years using a "unique architecture that included an ORNL-built inverter, isolation transformer, vehicle-side electronics and coupling technologies."

8 of 169 comments (clear)

  1. 270% efficiency by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 4, Funny

    A Tesla charger has an efficiency of over 90%. If this charger has an efficiency three times that, then it should be above 270%. Maybe it can feed the extra 170% back into the grid.

    1. Re:270% efficiency by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      TFA states 90% efficiency at 3x the rate, bad summary is bad

    2. Re:270% efficiency by ebrandsberg · · Score: 4, Insightful

      If it charges at 3x the rate, that implies it's ability to pull power is at least 3x what the wired charger is pulling, and it would have to pull that from... a wired connection. This implies the main problem is that the car interface is simply designed to run at a lower power level than this wireless design, and this could be corrected by bumping up the wired interface charge capacity. This is just a case of leapfrogging specs, nothing more.

    3. Re:270% efficiency by tal_mud · · Score: 4, Informative

      A Tesla charger has an efficiency of over 90%. If this charger has an efficiency three times that, then it should be above 270%. Maybe it can feed the extra 170% back into the grid.

      The article poster mis-quoted the article. The article actually states: "achieved 90 percent efficiency at three times the rate". So it is the same efficiency as the tesla, but it charges three times as fast.

    4. Re:270% efficiency by michelcolman · · Score: 4, Funny

      A Tesla Supercharger charges an empty 90 kWh battery to 80% in 40 minutes. That would be 108 kW, right? And the new wireless demonstration is 20 kW, the first step into creating an unbelievable 50 kW charging system? Yawn...

      O, but of course it's wireless, so it will save you a massive amount of time! Sure, it will take an hour and 26 minutes to charge that same battery to the same 80% BUT when you have to connect to a supercharger it can take up to 60 seconds to plug in and unplug! Wireless is obviously better then.

  2. Re:Wireless charging is probably dangerous by cheater512 · · Score: 4, Informative

    Who said a MRI is dangerous? Thousands of people have them every day with no increase in cancer risk.

    If you bring a large chunk of metal in to the room then sure it's dangerous but that's more to do with the metal flying physically towards a magnet rather than cancer.

  3. 10% loss!! by thesupraman · · Score: 5, Informative

    Yes yes, terrible summary.

    The 'fun' part is the 10% coupling waste (versus I would imagine much less than 1% for plugin charging).
    Remember, we are not talking about the battery charge efficiency here, their 10% is just for the transfer of power to the car..

    So, thats 'only' 2kw continuous loss. Thank god everyone is converting their houses to LED lighting, which still wont
    offset the losses here.

    Go Progress!

  4. Re: Wireless charging is probably dangerous by scrote-ma-hote · · Score: 4, Informative

    Not MRIs. When I did a paediatric anaesthesia fellowship we would routinely sit in the room for the scan. Think cardiac MRIs requiring breath holds. The techs sit outside the room cause they need to use computers to run the scanner and also it's really (unpleasantly Even with quality ear protection) noisy. Plus something about pressure in the room that I never understood.