Home Quick Charger

[sefs]

Hey everyone,

I thought I'd post an update as to what I'm up to these days. I decided all the CAN knowledge I gained from the Chademo project would be well served taking four FFE chargers from salvage and putting them together for a Home Quick Charger

I'm in the validation phase of the control systems and cooling, but as of right now, I can quick charge my FFE at home from 0% to 100% in 45 minutes

Right now it's all arranged for prototyping, but an enclosure is in the works to be complete with industrial Pro-face touch screen, illuminated start/stop buttons, and mushroom E-stop switch. I'm definitely implementing Chademo with my charger, and I might do CCS in the future as well.

Key stats:
- Peak AC current: 115 A on a 150 A circuit breaker
- Peak DC current: 80 A
- Efficiency ~93%
- Peak AC power: 26 kW
- Peak DC Power 24 kW




This is a shot of the inside of one of the chargers. I can't tell you how long I looked for this, as well as who made it. It turns out TDK Corporation of Japan made these for Ford.


Here is a shot of the FFE Quick Charging. I'm going to build an enclosure for the chargers and everything, but here is the touch screen that it will center around. I'll have all the buttons and E-stops as well.


Here is another shot of the prototype hardware. You can see the subpanel by the charger stack. This will be with the Quick Charger enclosure. That's 2 AWG industrial extension cable feeding the subpanel. It's fed by a 200A transfer switch protected by a 150A breaker.


Finally, a close up of the charger stack. Coolant tubing and all. I have purchased larger radiators, as this one I have now is not up to the task.

 

[triangles]

Nice work. keep us updated.

 

[hybridbear]

Incredible! Thanks so much for sharing!

 

[sefs]

It just paid off today. I forgot my laptop at home and needed to go back quickly. I arrived back home from work with 35% charge. In 30 minutes I had a full charge and was back to work! If I would have had to charge normally, it would have been a couple hours.

 

[sefs]

Another quick update:

Charging via Chademo to my FFE is working great. I had to solve some issues with my individual controllers for each of the four chargers, but since that has been solved, their performance has been rock solid.

I added a boost transformer to the feed going to the chargers. Under load, the voltage was dropping as low as 228V at each of the chargers. Now, with the boost autotransformer, the voltage doesn't go below 245V. Net result: now 25 kW DC out, and 27 kW AC in. A gain of about a kW, not too bad.

Cooling is getting tackled. I tried with some cheap 140mm fans that did 83 CFM each, but even at four on a larger 4 fan radiator, I was having overheating issues. I'm moving to four 140 mm fans that do 367 CFM each, and we'll see how that does.

Finally, I'm working on reverse engineering the module firmware itself. I'm knee deep into the binary file for flashing the module with IDA Pro, and am making progress sorting through all the various subroutines. If you're curious, the processor is a Renesas M16C. The only two things I want to change here are the maximum voltage parameter (right now it is 362V no matter what it receives over CAN), so I can charge other, higher voltage pack EV's; and the current ramp up time. Right now, the charger ramps up slowly, presumably to be a nice load. However, I need to achieve 20 Amps/second in current rise to satisfy the Chademo spec. The ramp down is nearly instant, so that wouldn't be an issue.

A case is also in the works. Preliminary footprint appears to be about 16"x44" and about 5 feet tall.

 

[jeffand]

Is the line voltage drop seen at the electrical service panel when it's under load? If it is I would check to see how far your house is from power companies transformer. If your house is like a 1000 feet from the transformer this would explain the voltage drop.
What I heard is that Tesla super chargers stacks multiple modified 40 amp car chargers together to get the higher charging rates.
Has thier been any issues with the battery cooling with your FoMoCo super charger?

 

[sefs]

Is the line voltage drop seen at the electrical service panel when it's under load? If it is I would check to see how far your house is from power companies transformer. If your house is like a 1000 feet from the transformer this would explain the voltage drop.
What I heard is that Tesla super chargers stacks multiple modified 40 amp car chargers together to get the higher charging rates.
Has thier been any issues with the battery cooling with your FoMoCo super charger?

My main panel goes to about 232 under full load, and there are an additional 4 volts of drop to the actual chargers. That is due to the drop in the branch feeders to the chargers. My house is about 120' from the transformer. The drop from 240 to 232 is due to the service lateral. For it to be out of spec, it would have to be 228V at the meter socket, and the lowest it's going is 232V; so no problem as far as the power company is concerned.

That is exactly how Tesla does their supercharger topology.

No problem with cooling. At most, a few degrees temperature increase over a charging session.

 

[sefs]

This weeks update: And then there were five.

I picked up a 5th charger to complete my array. I'm done, I swear! This one will be living outside the stack for awhile so I can get board access for reverse engineering some of the firmware in the charger. With the 5th charger, I will be at 100A DC peak, and 31 kW DC.

The new fans have worked great, but they are LOUD. I'm probably going to turn them on as needed, but I never wanted to have an overheating issue, and with 8x 367 CFM fans, I likely never will.

I have found a nice mobile work cabinet that should work for housing all the chargers and controls. It measures 24"x24"x66". The chargers will have to be mounted vertically, but that will make most efficient use of the space.

 

[rsanders4]

And folks think I'm daft for wanting to put a CCS port on my FFE. Wow... that's some serious engineering work you've done!

 

[sefs]

A final update to this project:

Has it been a year? I guess so. I have been using my quick charger pretty often on cold days. It's really nice to be able to put in 10% charge in about 3 minutes :lol: . I finally put all five modules into a case. Everything is mounted now and operating automatically. All I have to do is switch it on and it's ready to go as soon as the computer boots. I have the fans controlled on the radiators to turn on half at 90F and the other half at 95F. Some final stats for all those who are curious:

-DC Power Out: 31.3 kW (I'm able to run my Brusa on board charger as well to get a total of ~34 kW )
-5 modules
-Max input current: 158.8A with all 8 fans running. (I have a boost transformer to compensate for voltage drop under full power. Even at full power modules are getting 240V for a consistent DC power output.)
-Waste heat generated: About 2.5 kW of waste heat is dumped to the coolant loop.
-2 radiators with 8 total fans. Each fan moves 368 CFM, for a total of 2944 CFM with all fans running.

It's been a really fun project. I just wish it wouldn't have taken me a year to get it in a case :roll:

 

[EVA]

Wow - just wow. Thanks for putting a period at the end of the research paper!

And if you are really old school.

###

 

[Pearl]

That's a beautiful thing! Very professional.

 

[triangles]

Nice!!!

 

[sefs]

Just like the quick charger project on my car, this one is coming to a close too. Unfortunately, I was unable to modify the chargers to exceed 360VDC, so I won't be able to use them with my Model 3 or really any other car for that matter. I'll be starting the decommissioning process and trying to resell these chargers! This one has been a ton of fun too, and something really cool to show people.

 

[Sebuś]

I am happy to buy back chargers and software

Is there anyone who would like to undertake a similar project? I was able to pull out the CAN ID and find the right bytes.

I provide some information about Ford ID. Is there anyone who would like to work together to load FFE faster?


##
SOBDM
Battery State of Charge - Dispayed (SOC %)
ID 7E2 (B00-B07), 7E2 [B04]/2 = % Displayed
Question :
H: 7E2 03 22 48 45 00 00 00 00
Answer:
X: XXX XX XX XX XX B4 XX XX XX - /2 = SOCD%
H: 7EA 04 62 48 45 00 00 00 00 - SOCD - 00,00
H: 7EA 04 62 48 45 8B 00 00 00 - SOCD - 69,50
H: 7EA 04 62 48 45 8C 00 00 00 - SOCD - 70,00
H: 7EA 04 62 48 45 8D 00 00 00 - SOCD - 70,50


##
Batery Charger Input Voltage ID 7E2 (B00-B07), 7EA[B04 B05]HEX->DEC/100 = in V
Question:
H: 7E2 03 22 48 5E 00 00 00 00
Answer:
H: 7EA XX XX XX XX B4+B5 XX XX /100
H: 7EA 05 62 48 5E 5C 0A 00 00 - 235,62
H: 7EA 05 62 48 5E 5C 30 00 00 - 236,00
H: 7EA 05 62 48 5E 5C 0A 00 00 - 235,62
H: 7EA 05 62 48 5E 5B DE 00 00 - 235,18


##
SOBDM
Battery Charger Output Voltage
A: ID 7E2 (B00-B07), Q: 7EA[B04 B05]HEX->DEC/100 = in V

Question:
H: 7E2 03 22 48 4A 00 00 00 00
Answer:
H: 7EA 05 62 48 4A 82 2D 00 00 - 333,25V

##
SOBDM
SOBDM to BCM Wakeup Status
Question:
H: 7E2 03 22 DD 81 00 00 00 00
Answer:
H: 7EA 04 62 DD 81 01 00 00 00 = PSR on
H: 7EA 04 62 DD 81 00 00 00 00 = PSR off



****************
##
GFM2
Battery Charger Status [B04] 01 = Ready, 00 = Not Ready
Question:
H: 7D2 03 22 48 4F 00 00 00 00
Answer:
H: 7DA 04 62 48 4F 00 00 00 00 - Not Ready
H: 7DA 04 62 48 4F 01 00 00 00 - Ready


******************
SOBDM

##
Minimum Battery Module Voltage
[B04 B05] /100
Question:
H: 7E4 03 22 48 40 00 00 00 00
Answer:
H: 7EC 05 62 48 40 0F 25 00 00 = 3,88V


##
VAR-V
Question:
H: 7E4 03 22 48 3F 00 00 00 00
Answer:
H: 7EC 05 62 48 3F 00 0F 00 00 = 0,01

##
ESTI [B04 B05] x 2 = kWh
Question:
H: 7E4 03 22 48 48 00 00 00 00
Answer:
H: 7EC 05 62 48 48 29 B4 00 00 - 21,352kWh