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Gov't Researchers Develop Wireless Car Chargers That Are Faster Than Plug-ins (computerworld.com) 169

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."
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Gov't Researchers Develop Wireless Car Chargers That Are Faster Than Plug-ins

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  • by ShanghaiBill ( 739463 ) on Tuesday April 05, 2016 @11:32PM (#51850703)

    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.

    • Re:270% efficiency (Score:5, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 05, 2016 @11:44PM (#51850741)

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

      • Re:270% efficiency (Score:5, Insightful)

        by ebrandsberg ( 75344 ) on Wednesday April 06, 2016 @12:11AM (#51850857)

        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.

        • by skids ( 119237 )

          Well, not entirely, you do get to use inflexible low gauge wire to attach it to the grid, since nothing needs to flex or bend, and there are no contacts so you can weld everything in place. Those two things may make for a much lower resistance which would mean less need to step the voltage up. Whether the electronics on the vehicle side are heavier or lighter is important, too. If the 90% figure is accurate it is quite impressive. It should probably be asked of them whether that figure is realistic in a

        • by sribe ( 304414 )

          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.

          Bigger, heavier, less flexible cable ;-)

          • You can get more power by raising the voltage and keeping the current the same, you know. Now, how safe a 480V or 960V charging system will be with the average consumer is another matter.
      • by michelcolman ( 1208008 ) on Wednesday April 06, 2016 @03:11AM (#51851451)

        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.

        • 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.

          We need a insightful sarcasm mod.

    • 10% loss!! (Score:5, Informative)

      by thesupraman ( 179040 ) on Wednesday April 06, 2016 @12:09AM (#51850847)

      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!

      • by skids ( 119237 )

        1% is a bit optimistic... not for coupling loss but for the loss of AC-AC voltage conversion to get across the wire without cooking it or generating insane magnetic fields.

        10% is undoubtably worse than the state of the art for plug-in systems, but already better than plug-in systems used to be some decade or so back,

        • Why on earth would you think you need AC-AC conversion for a connector?
          The battery management is going to take care of the battery charging, and thats a set amount of loss (it doesnt care how the power gets to it..)
          The charger unit itself can be designed to produce whatever voltage makes sense to drive the battery controller.
          In a direct connection system, that connection will be at that sensible voltage, and believe it or not, to push power (even 20kw)
          down a nice fat conductor does not need any fancy conver

          • The battery management is going to take care of the battery charging, and thats a set amount of loss (it doesnt care how the power gets to it..)

            Actually, like computer power supplies providing DC, that depends on how much power they're using - efficiency varies depending on the load. For example, I've read that Teslas are about 70-80% efficient with a 120V 15A connection, but reach ~90% with a 240V 50A connection.

            The losses aren't solely in the wiring, but also in the DC conversion system.

          • by skids ( 119237 )

            Why on earth would you think you need AC-AC conversion for a connector?

            Standard NEMA connections will do 600V

            I think you answered your own question there. Neither house current nor the battery pack's DC voltage will match the higher voltages needed to push power at reasonable currents.

        • by AaronW ( 33736 )

          The loss when charging my Tesla at 20KW through the cable is fairly minimal. There is an 8V drop between the meter and the shutoff switch in my garage over a 100 foot run, but the drop between that and my car going through the flexible wire is fairly minimal, maybe a volt. The cable gets warm, though not uncomfortably so. One of these days I need to track down where the 8v drop is coming from. At 10KW the drop is negligible.

          Personally I don't see much need for wireless charging, at least for Tesla. The Tesl

          • 10% is HUGE when talking about a common charging method for all cars.
          • > Personally I don't see much need for wireless charging, at least for Tesla

            Combined with the auto-parking feature, I'd say this is actually a very nice idea. Basically it would mean you would never have to do anything, and the car would always be fully charged. And the auto-park would ensure it was always perfectly aligned.

          • It isn't critical how I park my car, and when I pull my car out of my garage there's nothing on the floor when I back out.

            And there is the achilles heel of this system In order to achieve any kind of efficiency the transformer connection must be made, and made closely - otherwise you just have an inductor in the floor, and another on the bottom of the car, and warm up the garage.

            The electrical physics here is exceedingly simple. yeah, it's a transformer. Where this is going to fail is getting those two inductors close enough. My guess is that they will have some docking mechanism, perhaps a V groove, coupled with grooves or

      • 2kW continuous loss is much less than the energy that would be wasted on healthcare and funerals for people who accidentally fry themselves on plug-in charging systems. Of course, the current system has problems too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by mysidia ( 191772 )

      No matter how many times more efficient a new tech is; It will never reach or exceed 100% efficiency, because thermodynamics and math say no.

      To be 3X as efficient is defined as saying the loss rate is

      So at 90% the charger has a loss of L

      Thus, if it is 3-times as efficient, then the loss rate is L = 96.66667% * j.

    • Re:270% efficiency (Score:5, Informative)

      by tal_mud ( 303383 ) on Wednesday April 06, 2016 @02:01AM (#51851219)

      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.

      • Re:270% efficiency (Score:4, Informative)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) on Wednesday April 06, 2016 @07:30AM (#51852037) Homepage Journal

        Tesla chargers are 120kW, and the more common CHAdeMO used by the Nissan Leaf is 50kW in it's currently deployed form. So if they can get up to 50kW they will have matched currently available wired technology, except that 50kW is not really enough and will be replaced by 100kW+ chargers in the next few years.

        Rapid charging needs to average about 30 minutes per charge to be useful. So that means charging at 1.5C, i.e. 2x the capacity of the battery plus some extra for losses. 30 minutes is the average, if you arrive with 1% charge it will take 45 minutes but most people arrive with at least 20-30%.

        The minimum battery capacity for a mainstream vehicle seems to be about 60kWh, which will give you a solid 200 miles range under realistic conditions with some margin for safety. So the charger needs to be at least about 100kW to hit the 1.5C + losses target. That's why Tesla supply 120kW.

        This misses the point of wireless charging though. No need to plug in, just install it in car parking spaces and let the car charge for an hour or two while you go round the shops. 20kW is actually already quite adequate for this. I regularly charge at 7kW when shopping.

    • by Twinbee ( 767046 )
      Perhaps do the maths from 100-efficiency. So 96.666% would be 3x as efficient as 90%.
    • I read it, perhaps incorrectly, as the transfer of power from the charger to the vehicle is 90% efficient. Any losses in stashing the power into the batteries would be on top of that? e.g. If the Tesla is 90% efficient with a mechanical connection. And the mechanical connection is close to 100% efficient (which it would need to be in order not to melt?). Then the charging efficiency of a Tesla fitted out to use this would be .0.9 * 0.9 = 81 percent?

      BTW what happens to the missing 10% ? Ten percent of

    • The real unsurprising story: DOE is developing a method to efficiently transmit 50KW wirelessly - meaning they can boil a 100kg person, wirelessly, in just under 9 minutes:

      (100 x 4 x 63 / 3412 = 7.4kW to do it in an hour) https://elementsofheating.word... [wordpress.com]

      • Oooh nice. That takes care of ALL environmental issues in one fell swoop! Just boil the drivers! Brilliant! :)

  • The actual quote from the article is " achieved 90 percent efficiency at three times the rate of the plug-in systems commonly used for electric vehicles today.", not three times the efficiency. They're comparing the charger to a typical home charger. Which is meaningless since the system isn't limited by the connection to the car. And think about it. 10% loss of charging energy so you don't have to go to all the trouble of plugging it in? What a waste of our tax dollars.
    • The article claims the wireless charging system is more efficient than plug-in systems, and since the other comparison was most definitely about home chargers then presumably they're saying that the home chargers are less than 90% efficient at transferring power grid energy to the car battery. They could simply be using more expensive components to achieve the superior efficiency but it could also be inherent in the design since the voltage conversion from wall voltage to car power system voltage is handled

      • It would be impossible for a wireless transmission system to reach optimal efficiency at the same point the batteries are at their optimum recharge rate.
        That would be the biggest fluke in physics in all of history if that were the case.

        • Did you do the calculations to figure this out?

          Both wired voltage converters and wireless charging systems use magnetic coupling, the only difference is that the wireless system increased the gap between the two coils and hopefully eliminated several feet of unnecessary and inefficient DC cabling. The wireless charging efficiency drops dramatically over increased distances between the two coils so they probably got them as close together as possible which could be as little as 5.7" for the Toyota Prius, und

          • by AaronW ( 33736 )

            DC cabling is very efficient, especially when you consider the fact that the cabling in a Tesla is designed to handle far, far more power. Power loss in wire is non-linear based on current, it's basically (I^2) * R. The loss in the flexible cable going to my Tesla loses less than 1V at 20KW. The cable gets a little warm, but it's still quite comfortable to touch. If there were significant loses anywhere near the loss due to wireless charging then UL wouldn't approve it. It would turn the copper cabling into

            • What voltage is your Tesla receiving power at? If there's a 1V drop at 120V that's not too bad but if it's at 12V that's nearly 10% of the power output by your charger which has it's own inefficiencies. I suspect Tesla is particularly smart with their charging system so it likely surpasses most other charging system's in efficiency but the fact remains that there's power loss in the cabling that may not be exhibited by a wireless charger that's much closer to the batteries in the car.

              I've assumed that the 9

              • by AaronW ( 33736 )

                It charges at 240V, so under 1v is under 1% loss. I doubt there's any noticeable loss at the connector since it is designed to handle far more current when supercharging. The inverters for charging the battery are also probably quite efficient, probably over 95% and more like 96-97% efficient. The wireless charging would be in addition to the normal losses. The incoming AC would need to be converted to DC, then converted back to AC at a higher frequency. Then there are the losses involved in the energy tran

    • > What a waste of our tax dollars.

      I think perhaps they are viewing this as a step toward a world where, for example, chargers are buried under bus stops and when a bus stops to load/unload passengers, it also takes on a load of electrons. Chances of that eventually working once about 50 other problems are solved? Who the hell knows? Not terribly high probably, but clearly not zero.

      Probably a better investment than an F-35. And much cheaper too.

  • by bromoseltzer ( 23292 ) on Tuesday April 05, 2016 @11:37PM (#51850719) Homepage Journal

    Can't find any clue as to what frequency is being used for the charger. The prospect of 50 kW of power in your garage or wherever is worrying, despite being "well shielded". Even if it's a lower frequency (in the kHz range), there will be harmonics all over the spectrum, putting radio amateurs and anyone else using sensitive radio gear in a bind.

    • “We've arranged a global civilization in which most crucial elements profoundly depend on science and technology. We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster. We might get away with it for a while, but sooner or later this combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces.

      Most people don't know the difference even on a supposed tech site. If they don't get it here, what hope is there for the rest of the people? I know people wth engineering degrees that don't even get this/

    • Sorry, this was meant to be a reply to Wheels17.
    • by WarJolt ( 990309 )

      Not to mention if you ever did manage to sink that much power into your cell phone it would likely melt, require a beefy alternator and it would significantly affect your gas mileage.

    • At 50KW? Never mind radio amateurs - you'll need a 'no pacemakers' sign on the garage.

  • The wireless charging system is not faster than all plug-in chargers, just the ones commonly used at home. The charge stations available commercially are faster and the article mentions this. It is also not three times more efficient, it's 3x faster than the home charging systems. It's 90% percent efficient, which is impressive but I seriously doubt any charging system is only 30% efficient.

    • Rapid charging stations that can be installed in homes, albeit expensively, are 50kw, 2.5x the power of this wireless prototype. That's why they are trying to up the power transfer to compete with the rapid charging stations that exist currently.
  • I can't wait until the patent gets handed off to somebody to profit from.
  • Extremely dangerous (Score:3, Interesting)

    by burtosis ( 1124179 ) on Wednesday April 06, 2016 @12:19AM (#51850883)
    50kw, or even 20kw is extremely dangerous to couple. Outside of the leaking RF spectrum possibly interfering with electronics, the danger is something with a similar resonant field could be nearby and absorb some of that power. Even just a few tens of watts could start a fire. They probably need something akin to a gfci circuit that monitors the power in and out precisely and if something is absorbing power that shouldn't be, notice the discrepancy and terminate the charge.

    The actual picture is pretty funny, with a ginormous briefcase put under the back of the vehicle, a mere 2 inches above the similar unit embedded in the floor. No way is that remotely practical, they would need to increase the air gap by at least triple, to 5x+ to properly mount it under reasonable vehicles. To keep the same coupling, the size would then have to be increased substantially. Further there is no way in hell that is working while you drive, it has to be precisely aligned which isn't going to happen period, even at stoplights. I could see it embedded into a garage stall, or even a parking stall outdoors, perhaps, but alignment would be a major issue and one that is not being addressed at this stage from anything I can gather.
  • Neat stuff, I'm sure. But transportation fuel will always be in the form of liquid molecules or solid anodes that are made in big factories in bulk at much higher efficiencies than possible with electrical transmission and run air-breathing engines with designs that don't need to pack fuel and oxidizer in close proximity. Unless you let the fully-baked hippies try to wish physics away with half-baked tree-hugger politics, that is.
    • let the fully-baked hippies try to wish physics away with half-baked tree-hugger politics.

      Have you been reading the prospectus for my IPO?

  • by Anonymous Coward

    Why is gov doing corporate R&D?????????? Why are tax dollar being spent to improve the profit margins of a select group of companies???

  • ...government charges YOU!!!
  • by nomaddamon ( 1783058 ) on Wednesday April 06, 2016 @04:13AM (#51851601)
    20kw is nowhere near three times the efficiency of an average charger.

    Home chargers for Tesla offer 20kw (22kw in EU) for usual setup.
    Superchargers offer a lot more - 135kw for Tesla superchargers, 50kw for regular EU charging stations.
  • Tesla Model S was the best selling EV in the US last year (yes, it outsold the next best - the Leaf, in number of units, not just sales $) - source http://insideevs.com/monthly-p... [insideevs.com].

    Typical home charger for a Tesla is the mobile connector which delivers 10KW charging from a dryer outlet. Owners have an option to install a 20KW Tesla plug-in charger in their garages, which many people do. Tesla plug-in "superchargers" charge up to 120KW, so 20KW wireless is not 3 times the rate of any of those plug-in charge

  • Of course it's faster, because with inductive charging systems you can build it in such a way that it can use a 13.2kV primary coil without putting anyone at immediate risk of electrocution.

    The limiting factor in plug-in systems is the 240V supply rail, which is limited to a 30A circuit breaker (240V * 30A = 7200W). If you pipe in a higher voltage primary to a plug-and-socket, then you introduce issues of arc flashing and electrocution. However, if the primary high voltage coil is safely isolated and couple

  • Often I want something and when I get it, I realize I didn't really want it after all. I think wireless charging falls into that category.

    The reality is that electric vehicle owners equip the place they park their car overnight with a high capacity electrical circuit. It takes less than 30 seconds to plug in the car after you park.

    Doubtless a wireless charging solution could be made safe and effective, but it would cost more. We don't need to find ways to make electric vehicles more costly.
    • The problem is that, even at 7.2kW (maximum available power from a home circuit) it will still take several hours to charge even a modestly-sized eCar battery.

      As I outlined in another post, using a higher voltage supply increases the available power, but this cannot be done very safely with a plug and socket system where contacts are made and broken. There is a risk of arc flash any time a high voltage contact is broken.

      Have you ever heard something spark when you plug something into the wall, or unplug it?

      • I agree that faster charges may be impractical without wireless. We have a 100 amp 240 vac circuit In our garage and the Tesla charges (approximately) at 80 amps and that amount to 60 miles of range for every hour of charge. As a commuter car this is fine and that is really all we use the car for. For long range trips, we have a small hybrid SUV and frankly we could just as easily rent a car for those rare occasions.

        For long range driving trips in an electric vehicle, I see no practical charging technolo
      • The problem is that, even at 7.2kW (maximum available power from a home circuit) it will still take several hours to charge even a modestly-sized eCar battery.

        As I outlined in another post, using a higher voltage supply increases the available power, but this cannot be done very safely with a plug and socket system where contacts are made and broken. There is a risk of arc flash any time a high voltage contact is broken.

        Have you ever heard something spark when you plug something into the wall, or unplug it? That's a small arc inside the socket. At 120V or 240V household voltage, they're pretty small (but can be much worse under abnormal circumstances). The higher the voltage, the larger and deeper a plug and socket must be to contain the arc, and the less safe the whole thing becomes.

        Removing the make/break operation from the process increases safety by orders of magnitude, and allows much higher supply voltages to be used, therefore increasing power and decreasing charging times.

        It is not uncommon for modern Lithium batteries to be charged at 1-2C. A 25kWh battery could be charged at 50kW CC and probably even finish its CV cycle, all in about an hour.

        I think this also makes more sense for a mall or office parking lot. I imagine it would be a hell of a lot easier to just put a wireless charger in each stall and not have to worry about the connectors being damaged by humans connecting and disconnecting their vehicles than to build a charging station w/ the appropriate plugs at hundreds of stalls. Instead, you supply a nice steady stream of power while the user works / shops.

  • by mi ( 197448 ) <slashdot-2017q4@virtual-estates.net> on Wednesday April 06, 2016 @09:13AM (#51852439) Homepage Journal

    This is awesome news, but there is a threat here:

    may someday allow roadways to charge vehicles while they are being driven

    I'm fairly certain, that future technology will not allow anonymous charging. It could, but it will not — for the same gratuitous reasons you can't use and recharge a toll-paying transponder anonymously (the way you could use a phone-calling card, for example), but must associate it with both yourself and your car. (Well, New Hampshire, sort of [ezpassnh.com], makes it possible to avoid providing your name, but the cars must still be listed in advance.)

    And it is increasingly impossible to drive in certain places without such a transponder [paturnpike.com], which is, of course, routinely used for surveillance [aclu.org].

    As happened with electronic toll-paying, the on-the-road charging too will go from optional to mandatory. Manufacturers will reduce the battery-sizes in many models to save weight and space — and how much of a charge do you need to get from the powered highway to your home (over unpowered streets), right? Effective tracking of your car will become possible. Worse, it may also become possible to remotely disable your car by revoking your access to these chargers.

    Today's concerns over license-plate readers [aclu.org] may then appear naively quaint...

    • I think new advances in battery technology will lead to higher capacity and lower weight at significantly lower cost. If the cost of car battery packs goes down by a factor of 10 (which is common as they become commonly mass produced items), it will be very difficult to make the case for wireless charging while driving.
      • by mi ( 197448 )

        If the cost of car battery packs goes down by a factor of 10

        The cost... What about the weight and the bulk? I love the possibility to lay the rear seats flat in my gasoline-powered car — a luxury electric cars do not afford, as far as I know...

        it will be very difficult to make the case for wireless charging while driving

        Yes, it may turn out that way. But if, as the write-up suggests, such charging is implemented, it will come with the privacy risks I fear...

  • I'm avoiding electric cars ... but not because they charge slow.

    I'm avoiding them because of cost and distance limits.

    Another non-problem solved by tax funded research.

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