How The Tesla Supercharger Works? Step By Step

Post date: 19-Apr-2020 10:03:39

hello again Steven here and welcome to the second episode of this driving that is love 101 series in the previous video which you can find here I actually explained why it can be that your supercharging speed is slow and in that video I called the supercharger a transformer which was not entirely accurate so.

but I wanted to keep it simple at that point but today we're going to do a deep dive into the nitty-gritty details of what exactly a Tesla supercharger is and which components are involved now before we get started please keep one thing in mind and that this explanation is for the European superchargers so it might be that the setup for the superchargers in the US or in China or anywhere else in the world is slightly different from this setup.

now first I want to give the high-level overview of how the power gets do the supercharger so we start with this overview here which is here on the screen where we have the European high voltage transmission grid so most of that is actually a 380 kilovolt grid which on supercharger level we can't handle so between this grid and the transformer cabin that is located at supercharger sites there are one or more other transformer houses that are transforming it down to the level of 20k or 12 K all together now that 20k 25k there are different levels depending on what area you're in but those are kind of mid-range power lines they often go underground as well in in Europe.

but sometimes the are above the ground as well on these telephone poles or something that looks like a telephone pole as well but that's mostly in all the regions now this is the industrial use that is coming in and then you have a transformer cabin that is on the supercharger location and it depends on where it is located and on which power line it is tapping into so for example you have this one here which is a 15,000 volt input and that one is in arts lab near Antwerp for example and then the other one which is in local which is close to me that one actually goes or gets 12,000 volts so that's a different kind of line that that comes in but that's how the power gets to the supercharger now the transformer uses that high voltage and transforms that down into something that the supercharger can use.

now in our case that is a three-phase connection that is coming in and is going out to the supercharger as well now if you look at the label on the supercharger then we see that the input current is 192 amps so that's quite a bit of power that is going in there and it is a 400 volt system but it is rated for 380 to 480 volts because of possible fluctuations on the net of course the output voltage that is 400 volts usually and around 300 amps if you're fully charging at 120 kilowatts now the supercharger itself can handle a 330 amp that's for 480 volts so that means that in theory the supercharger could handle 158 kilowatts right that's what the components are rated for.

it's not necessarily what the supercharger will actually be able to deliver at some point in the future I think there are more components involved that need to be changed for a supercharger to be able to charge up to let's say 150 kilowatts or to deliver up to 150 kilowatts over to stalls now the supercharger cabinets which you see on this picture here they actually consists out of 12 charges and those charges inside which you can see here on this picture combined with a lot of electronics and cooling stuff those charges are actually the same as the ones that are in the Model S and Model X right so we got 12 x d Model S and Model X charges that are converting the raw AC power.

so the alternating current into DC power which is direct current which is going straight into the battery when iPhone first found out about this I thought was really funny that they actually use the same charges now these charges are rated at about in this case where you have a 135 kilowatt supercharger at about 11 kilowatts now since these are exactly the same charges as you have in the Model S and the Model X potentially they might up this 260 and a half kilowatts that would generate a supercharger of 198 kilowatts that would be awesome but I think there is more involved here than just upping that charge a lot more heat different cooling system maybe that's needed different components that are inter connecting.

the Chargers for example so yeah that is just a theoretical approach right now those charges are actually divided up in two blocks of tree so per tree they form one block so you have a block of about 33 kilowatts and once you have this division then those blocks get turned on or turned off depending on the supercharger depending on the usage our of one or both stalls because those four blocks are divided over both stalls and depending on the temperature every battery of course and the state of charge or your battery and everything that I've discussed.

in the previous article now what really happens in the background is that if you come to a supercharger and the stalls are shares right across one supercharger the stall that the guy that arrives the latest on the second stall that one gets at least one block so you get at least three charges assigned to the second stall right now why do you sometimes see that is only charging on 20 kilowatts because it's not fully used because the car is limiting that based on software and parameters of temperature state of charge all those kind of things so that means if you're charging if you're the first at the supercharger you get all four blocks and then that is limited to 120 kilowatts now if the second guy.

pulls up to the charger then he will get assigned that first block if you're still charging at or around 120 kilowatts and you will go down with one block so you still keep around 100 kilowatts in this case and then the other guy gets the 33 remaining kilowatts as soon as your charge starts to drop then his charge rate will go up because he will get assigned a second block which will gradually come into play and they get switched on and off depending on your state of charge assuming that both batteries or warm and are at low state of charge to start with for example now the example that I'm giving here is basically for the 135 kilowatt charges there are some over 90 kilowatt superchargers still in Europe.

I don't think there are many but there are a few left or right but you also have the 145 kilowatt charges which means that the charges inside the supercharger cabinet right they are actually rated then at 12 kilowatts so now you know what the supercharger is which components are involved and how the load balancing and all that kind of stuff actually works I hope you enjoyed the video if you do please like it and subscribe to the channel using that button over there and don't forget to click that little bell icon so you don't miss out on any new videos because I will continue to do these 101 videos for all the new Evie drivers and especially the new Tesla drivers that are coming along in the next few weeks and months so yeah hope you enjoyed it and see you guys next time bye bye.