Swiss invent ultrafast 15-min EV charger
Researchers herald breakthrough in electric vehicle fast-charging with 4.5 megaWatt charger, but there’s a catchSwiss researchers from the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EFPL) are claiming they have created a ground-breaking new way of charging an electric vehicle that takes only a fraction of the amount of time to fully charge a car, compared to traditional methods.
Instead of the six to eight hours a domestic power point takes to fully charge the average EV, the new ultrafast charging point developed by EFPL can fully charge a pure-electric vehicle from flat in less than 15 minutes.
Until now, the biggest challenge of an ultrafast charger has been the flakey power grid of most cities, say researchers. Attempting to extract 4500kW of electricity (enough to power 4500 washing machines) in even the most modern city us enough to cause the electricity grid to fail.
To get round this problem, scientists at EFPL have created a system that includes a ‘buffer’, or intermediate storage system, that slowly builds up charge (from a low voltage source) over time to prime the charging station for the ultrafast charge.
It’s not known how long it takes to charge the buffer, but when it does comes to charge your car the ultrafast charger works completely off the grid.
Unfortunately, there’s just one catch.
The ‘intermediate storage’ facility used by the Swiss researchers needed so many lithium-ion cells for the massive 4500kW charge that they could completely fill a large shipping storage container -- just to charge one car’s battery.
In the future scientists hope an even more efficient buffer system will be developed, partly due to the advances in battery technology.
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