Oak Ridge National Lab reveals 120-kilowatt wireless vehicle charging system
New research from the Oak Ridge National Laboratory decimated previous displays of what wireless charging could achieve with vehicles, reaching 120 kilowatts–six times the power of the original iteration unveiled just two years ago.
The move advances charging times dramatically, bringing them closer to the speed of a traditional gas station fill-up. Researchers also managed it across a six-inch gap dividing two magnetic coils to charge a battery pack. To do so, they co-optimized the latest silicon carbide power devices with a new coil design. Despite the massive gain in charge, that design allows it to remain lightweight and compact.
“It was important to maintain the same or smaller footprint as the previous demonstration to encourage commercial adoption,” Veda Galigekere, project lead of ORNL’s Power Electronics and Electric Machinery Group, said. “We used finite element and circuit analyses to develop a novel co-optimization methodology, solving the issues of coil design while ensuring the system doesn’t heat up or pose any safety issues, and that any loss of power during the transfer is minimal.”
Moe Khaleel, associate laboratory director for Energy and Environmental Sciences at ORNL, described it as an important step forward on the path to greater electric vehicle adoption in the country. ORNL researchers will continue to push toward power transfer level to 200 and eventually to 350 kilowatts.
