Oak Ridge National Laboratory Creates 100 kW Wireless EV Charger

Engineers at Oak Ridge National Laboratories (ORNL) in Tennessee have brought us one step closer to electric vehicles that charge themselves without any tedious plugging and unplugging. The researchers recently expanded a laboratory proof-of-concept wireless charging system to the real world using a modified Hyundai Kona EV. The wireless charging system was reportedly able to juice up the car at 100 kW, adding hundreds of miles of range per hour of charging.
The system, as implemented in the test vehicle, has a five-inch gap between the charger on the ground and the receiving coil on the car. In a previous laboratory test, the same setup reached 120 kW charging speeds, but this test features a production vehicle perched above the prototype coil. Usually, any separation between transmission and receiving coils causes efficiency to tank, but the team says this system has an impressive 96% efficiency rate. That means just 4% of the supplied power is lost as heat.
EV charging speeds can vary wildly depending on the capabilities of a vehicle and whether it is fully compatible with a given charging station. Multiple plug standards also require some drivers to use adapters to recharge on the go. The system developed at ORNL has the potential to be much easier to use. Just park the car atop the charger, and it begins charging at 100 kW. That’s equivalent to the low-end of Level 3 plug-in systems. For the Kona crossover used in testing, it would completely regain its 200-mile range in under an hour.
The system consists of two coils: one that turns AC from the grid into an alternating magnetic field and another in the vehicle that receives that energy via the magnetic field and transforms it back into usable power. ORNL researchers say the innovation making all this possible is a polyphase electromagnetic coupling coil, which the team has been improving for the past three years. The coils are just 14 inches across, but the ORNL researchers still beat the efficiency of wired chargers. Those cables can lose up to 20% of their power to inefficiencies, reports Autoblog.
While the researchers have shown this system can work in the real world, that doesn’t mean it will happen overnight. Auto manufacturers would have to agree on a standard for wireless charging, and the ORNL system would need to be commercialized. The polyphase coil uses multiple materials that could increase costs compared with traditional chargers, which might make it a tough sell to consumers and car companies. Still, the technology works. One day, your car may charge itself whenever you park it.
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