MIT Student Built Electric Car Charges in 10 Minutes

[Jared Russell]

The vehicle needs 350 kW of power to obtain that ten minute charge time.

YIKES! For reference, standard US mains outlets can deliver about 2.4 kW of power (120VAC * 20A).

Still, it's cool to see that the alternative energy ball is rolling, even it's not quite there yet.

[MrForbes]

Electric service to a typical house can provide the necessary power. It just takes big wires connected to a big breaker at the main breaker panel...but I think the idea is to be able to recharge quickly at a "gas station", just like you fill your gas tank. Having an electric car with unlimited driving range is a real breakthrough.

[sanddrag]

Originally Posted by squirrel

Electric service to a typical house can provide the necessary power. It just takes big wires connected to a big breaker at the main breaker panel.

1400 Amps!?!? I don't think the whole transformer feeding my street is even that large. This will become an increasing problem with electric cars. I speculate if everyone on my street plugged in a Tesla, the first air conditioner to turn on would kill power for the whole street.

[MrForbes]

Oops, I missed a zero! pesky zeros...

[vivek16]

Well, not wanting change is no reason to hamper the future. Just how long did you think the current level of technology in our powergrid would last?

Cool stuff.

EDIT: Maybe a capacitor that could retain a charge and put out the necessary amperage? That would be an easy solution.

[artdutra04]

Originally Posted by sanddrag

1400 Amps!?!? I don't think the whole transformer feeding my street is even that large. This will become an increasing problem with electric cars. I speculate if everyone on my street plugged in a Tesla, the first air conditioner to turn on would kill power for the whole street.

Smart grid technology with variable-pricing based upon electric demand would mostly alleviate this problem. The current national electric grid has a lot of excess capacity at off-peak times, such as at 2am. But right now, there is no incentive for residential properties to run heavy loads at off-peak hours due to flat-rate pricing. And without smart-grid technology to automatically perform heavy-load actions at off-peak hours, no one wants to stay up until 2am to turn their dishwasher or clothes dryer on.

Thus, if electric cars were equipped with smart-grid technology coupled with a location-awareness feature (to detect if they are at a low-power facility such as a residential garage or at a high-power facility with as a recharging "gas" station, they could automatically charge at a level that doesn't cause rolling brownouts. Thus, on a residential street, an electric car would charge at a faster rate at 2am compared to 5pm to even out system loads. To further reduce demand on existing residential infrastructure, residential properties could be restricted to slow-trickle charging with the rapid 10-minute-charges only available at recharging stations, which would also have variable pricing to discourage recharging at peak hours.

In the long run, a society which places a much higher dependence on electric vehicles will need a beefed up electric grid infrastructure. That means more generating stations and more transmission (power) lines. Unfortunately, NIMBYs oppose pretty much every single transmission line upgrade or new generating station, even ones with significant economic and environmental benefits. In order for our country to make real economic and environmental progress towards a more sustainable energy economy, we'll need to get past NIMBYism by pretty much being blunt about it: just because you buy a house doesn't guarantee you magical powers over adjacent property owners and what they can do with their land, especially if the power lines, highway, railroad, airport, or other infrastructure existed at that location BEFORE you bought the property.