I'm a community member of the TeslaWA group here in Perth, Western Australia and an avid electronics enthusiast. Our group has been supplying charging infrastructure all around the state, showing cars at festivals and generally promoting sustainable transport. I've not had my Model 3 for very long but I wanna help out too. There are a few of us with some skills and electronics knowledge hacking on various projects.
These include a solar trailer with a 50kW charger. A "dino juice" powered genset for another 50kW DC charger at a roadhouse and still another project to made said genset run on vege oil (which the roadhouse has plenty of) - it's not really that "green"... but we're trying to get the charging infrastructure up and working so folks can get around our huge state. (the state government seems to wanna kick it's heels on EV charging infrastructure... so instead we're making it happen)
So the next project is trying to see whether we can get a "battery buffered DC charger" working in a proof of concept. The idea is to install these 50kW DC chargers in remote locations like roadhouses and service stations but where the grid connection may not be suitable for connecting a 50kW DC charger directly. The battery (50kWh or bigger) would charge slowly from regular old 32A 415v 3-phase (or potentially even single phase) and then when an EV pulls up, drain that quickly thru the 50kW DC charger. Simplified:
mains 415v 3-phase @ 32A outlet -> AC-DC charger (model x gen3 ?) -> 20-100kWh 350v battery (salvaged or rebuilt) -> Setec/Tritium 40-50kW DC charger (in DC-DC config) -> EV via CCS2
We have the battery/DC-DC charger working in a trailer with solar panels on it but it charges way too slow on solar.
I have sourced a gen3 Model X 16kW charger and the owner had it working in the car before the vehicle was stripped for parts.
I'm keen on Damien's gen3 charger board kit but I will need some help in identifying whether this is appropriate for our design. My questions would include things like:
- does the broad design of using a MX 16kW charger for stationary storage seem reasonable from a high level?
- will the MX charger with your board support single-phase operation and 3-phase operation in case we want to move one of these trailers from location A to location B and the AC supply options vary?
- will the DC side of the charger work only on a rebuild tesla battery or can we adjust the CC/CV parameters (say if the i30 battery is slightly different)?
- how would I go about designing the double-contactor and pre-charge connections for my application?
- any other advice you have
