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Lincoln Electric is bringing DC fast charging to sites WITHOUT 3-phase power (electrek.co)
5 points by thelastgallon 20 days ago | hide | past | favorite | 1 comment


This article is horseshit. A single-phase electrical service that is appropriately sized would work just fine for a DC fast charger.

Utilities just don’t offer them, and customers don’t want them. Ampacity is reduced by sqrt(2) for a three-phase circuit vs a single-phase circuit so you can use smaller conductors. The majority of a ‘typical’ commercial building’s power consumption will be three-phase motors.

Virtually every electrical service that is 400A or higher is going to be three-phase, most utilities cap out consumer single-phase services at 320A continuous (which is technically a 400A service when you factor in 80% derating for continuous loads) which uses a single phase 75kva transformer with a 240V secondary (or a portion of a larger transformer).

The reason being, a building with a service larger than 320A is going to be powering a lot of three-phase induction motors.

This 100kW DC charger is going to need at least 416A at 240V single-phase which is larger than any single phase service. These will be powered using two phases of a three-phase service anyways [facepalm]

Overwhelming Gell-Mann Amnesia from reading this one, yeesh.




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