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Interesting BATTERY article

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shingadaddy

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**broken link removed**

FYI for all the battery heads!
 
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Hope it's true!

I find it hard to believe you could charge a car battery in 5 minutes. Dumping 180KW into anything for five minutes seems like it would kablooey and *WHUMPH* or BOOM! followed by "OMG!! TEH CAR SPLODED!"
 
who has the theory and practicality saying under their posts? It may fit here very nicely!
 
that sounds interesting but at what price ? I think my own solar system (under construction) is stuck with lead-acid bats for now...
 
Hope it's true!

I find it hard to believe you could charge a car battery in 5 minutes. Dumping 180KW into anything for five minutes seems like it would kablooey and *WHUMPH* or BOOM! followed by "OMG!! TEH CAR SPLODED!"
The only sensible option would be to use a high voltage.

A 2kV battery would make this easy, just 90A, but imagine having 2kV at high current inside your car!
 
Could work at 600V... but it's 300A (big freaking huge cables and buss bars) and would be pulling as much power as a city block. I imagine the "gas station" would have to have a temporary power source to handle these five-minute peaks.

I have an idea for how to deal with that - replace the big underground gas tanks with big underground flywheels. Flywheels slowly spin up to peak speed to keep the average draw off the grid reasonably low, but can move a massive amount of power quickly when you charge your car.
 
You wouldn't need the flywheel or capacitor in the car if that battery really works the way they say, and doesn't actually explode when you hit it with 150,000 watts.

I've yet to hear a good reason for not swapping batteries in electric cars. The battery can be swapped quick and charged slow, tested to see if it's worth a damn or needs to be sent to recycling (all automatic). Standard size batteries, small car takes one, big car or SUV takes 2, truck takes 4 - 6 or whatever.
 
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A huge synchronous motor with a flywheel on it would do the job, it'd also help absorb the harmonics generated by the rectifiers. That's another though, imagine how large the transformer and rectifiers would need to be. I think the station would need a 10kV feed running it from 400V three phase would be impractical.
 
Motors with flywheels are really used to store electricity - they have a stabilising effect on the mains supply.
 
I think the station would need a 10kV feed running it from 400V three phase would be impractical.

I think you left out a comma, but you probably wouldn't want to run the station off a pole-pig, if that's what you mean.

However - 150kw of power times 5min of time is 12.5kwh of energy. Say they do 100 cars a day. That's 1.25Mwh of energy. Over a 24 hour period, the average draw is only 52kw. That's 5.2A total continuous off the 10kv distribution, less than 2A per phase. Very doable.
 
Yes, I missed out the comma.

The UK electrical distribution system is slightly different than yours. A large substation transformer is normally used to power a housing estate, industrial block a small village. Pole mounted transformers are normally only used to supply remote rural areas.

Low voltage power is 230V phase to neutral or 400V phase to phase. Houses are normally run from separate phases businesses normally have a three phase supply.

This means that a vehicle charging station would have to have its own 10kV feed which would often mean digging up roads to lay 10kV underground cables. I suppose a common sense solution is to put the charging stations near existing 10kV feeds.
 
Seems like that would be it.
I can just see it now...

"Gas station? But isn't that an electric car then?"

"Yeah. It's a 2014 Kickapoo Ojibwe Thundereagle. So, uh, where's a petrol station at?"

"What's... oh, you mean a charging station. Just follow the high-voltage lines to a charging station and lift the bonnet so you can plug in the perambulator."

"Dude, seriously - what?"
 
Yes, I missed out the comma.

The UK electrical distribution system is slightly different than yours. A large substation transformer is normally used to power a housing estate, industrial block a small village. Pole mounted transformers are normally only used to supply remote rural areas.

I live in a very rural area, pole mounted transformers are EXTREMELY rare, you only ever see a handfull of them as you drive round.
 
So what does lightning eat in the UK? Fish n' chips? Here in the States we feed it pole pigs.
 
The UK people run an entire village off one 230/400 three phase transformer source?
No wonder your so harmonophobic!

Here everyone gets their own. Most older housing blocks will have ten houses on 5 transformers. The newer residential blocks have one at every big house!

My farm is 120/240 single phase with my own 15 KVA pad transformer. plus its rated for 200 amp service. I think my utility cant do math very well though. 240 * 200 = 48KW not 15. But I could be wrong about my math. I did go to public school.
 
I went to a public school, too, but from watching old episodes of Masterpiece Theater I get the feeling this is another term with a very different meaning in the UK.

What kind of wiring do you guys use to power an entire housing estate off the 230/400V? Seems like it would have to be pretty heavy gauge stuff.
 
Could work at 600V... but it's 300A (big freaking huge cables and buss bars) and would be pulling as much power as a city block. I imagine the "gas station" would have to have a temporary power source to handle these five-minute peaks.

I have an idea for how to deal with that - replace the big underground gas tanks with big underground flywheels. Flywheels slowly spin up to peak speed to keep the average draw off the grid reasonably low, but can move a massive amount of power quickly when you charge your car.

Wouldn't the gas station just install a few of the same batteries as in the cars?

Mike.
 
Maybe. More like a hundred batteries than a few. Flywheel energy storage systems (they are used in backup power supplies) have considerably longer lifespans than batteries, thats what I was thinking of, but maybe these new batteries have longer lifespans, too.

One thing this new fast-charge battery doesn't have is good energy density. It's not even as good as existing batteries, which are just a small fraction of a tank of gas.
 
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