FAQ:
1) Where can learn more about batteries? http://j35.us/DIYlithiumBatteryBook
2) Where can I buy Lithium Batteries https://jag35.com/collections/lithium-batteries
4) Where Can I buy Solar Panels? https://amzn.to/3EqEywK
5) Where can I buy a Battery Management System https://s.click.aliexpress.com/e/_AAgcFQ
6) What parts do you use on your Samba? https://j35.us/eSambaParts
8) Why not use Supercapacitors?
A. Batteries work better at this time, caps are rare and expensive devices that are very good at doing things not needed for storage systems typically.
Disclosure: When you click on links to various merchants on this Videos and make a purchase, this can result in the earning of a commission. Affiliate programs and affiliations include, eBay Partner Network, and Amazon..
Advertise on my channel - http://archimedes.agency/ #influencers
My video gear - https://kit.co/jehu/vlogging-essentials
My T-shirts - https://kit.co/jehu/jehu-s-merchandizing
Follow me on Instagram http://j35.us/insta-jag35
Follow me on Twitter http://j35.us/twitter-jag35
Join our Facebook Group https://www.facebook.com/groups/jehusDiYPowerwalls/
If you would like support my Projects you can:
Buy a Tesla using my referral code https://ts.la/christal20797
donate: http://j35.us/helpwithcash
Donate BitCoin - 1PjhLF2vPueywwaoUMetZCLbC6rQiniyj7
or you can become our patron https://www.patreon.com/jehu

Hey guys all right today, i'm here in one of my warehouse, i want to do one of these kinds of videos where i show you something that i find interesting and maybe you will find it interested now. I'm not an expert, so i'm just spitballing here, i'm just going to make observations about this thing. I've done 0 research. So if i say the wrong thing, please don't jump down my throat.

If you know what this is and i'm have answers to this thing post. It in the comments now, let's take a look at this, i got a chance to get a couple of these or four of these to play with this. You might recognize this box as a tesla supercharger. If you haven't seen, this is because these are usually 20 feet behind, where that other little part is where you take the plug and then connect to the car, so that part over there is not the actual charger.

That's just a cord holder right. It's just to hold the cord that you take and then plug into your into your car. The charger is about 20 feet behind, usually and then in closed area. Sometimes it's closed with wood, sometimes as with chain link, but it's usually on the back and um.

I think the reason why they did this separate the charger from the actual plug is because these get really loud and we had a chance to see these up close working at laguna seca a few years back when the tesla took mobile superchargers and basically, they took Like four of these, and they had a massive like truck size, generator that they plug these into and then you were able to fast charge your tesla right, but the reason why yeah they would separate them is because these get super loud. There's a full-sized car sized radiator right here with a giant fan that spins really fast right, and so i think, to tesla, chose to separate these and put these back out there, so that the noise wouldn't be like right there. Next to you, where you're trying to charge your car right. So if you, if you know what it is to charge a tesla, you plug it in and it's usually quiet, there's, not a lot of things.

That happens. You just plug the cable, and it just starts charging that is uh different, that most of the other fast dc charging stations that i i'm starting to experience now with the rivian. Some of those are just like that. It's a box like that with a cable and a little screen in here and when you connect it when you connect your car, then you get to here and you feel all the fans going like crazy sounds like a turbine right and so tesla.

I guess decided to you know that and have that experience move the noisy part back right. So um. If you go around here and take it, take the door open you get to see that there are 12 of these chargers. Uh we've removed one and yeah.

There's 12 of them, and then let me show you what the charger looks like. It looks like this, which is very reminiscent to what the early tesla cars used to have. This might be a variant or it might even be the identical tesla charger that came in the early tesla cars right so now, just to for what i understand is uh. This is just uh an inverter and a dc to dc, essentially right like so ac goes in and then it gets rectified into dc and then it it gets boosted up to 400 to 400 to 450 volts, because that's the battery voltage of a tesla.
It's a 96 s pack, and so that's what this does it and if you see here, input is 85 to 277 volts 40 amps rms 50 to 60 right. So it's got quite a bit of uh range there. On the ac side on the output side, it's 50 to 430 volts 30 amp dc yeah, so 30 amps at 400, volts, that's 12, kilowatts, so yeah. I think these are uh very similar size to the ones that are in the car.

If these are not the very same ones that were in the early uh model assets right, so there's 12 of these in here, and so when you look at in the the inside of this box here, you realize this is the ac side. Look at the size of the cables right - and this is a three-phase uh power input right, so um yeah for 480 volts. I think uh ac right three three faces and then there's uh a neutral. So then that gets split.

So some of the chargers are in one face or or one leg hot leg and then the other one's right they split evenly and then they get all combined. The output gets combined into two different ones, because here are the output cables and just think about this. These this cables are massive look at these things and those cables then travel down this hole and underground. They go into the charging port where you plug your tesla, and then these cables get down downsized into that plug that cable, that you plug into the tesla right.

Why is it so big that they are in here and then on the uh on the actual plug where it goes into the tesla there? They can be so small that it's about this big right like about an inch in diameter uh. I don't know the answer to that, and maybe this is this is a cooling line that is coming down here. It might go there and maybe, along with these two cables, there's also cooling that goes into that the charger port, the cable right. So maybe that's how they can get away with having to need this size of the cable to go from here to there, but then the last final stretch, which is about six feet uh, you can go to such smaller cables and maybe it's because you know you Run cooling through that same cord, right, uh, so other than that everything like all these water lines or cooling lines are run in in parallel.

Right and here it has two uh water pumps and they're running in parallel, so they so they can increase the flow. So the flow is really fast on these because they need to do a lot of cooling and then here are the data cables that are coming from the two chargers so vehicle one vehicle, two, this box in particularly it's split into two sections. So that means it can be charging two cars at the same time, and so here are the uh, the data cables that are coming in from the car. It's so weird.
They use these big cables to do that. Data like 18 gauge but they're shielded right, because it's about 20 feet, uh away, yeah, maybe more 40 feet sometimes with like all the stuff um corners - and you know i don't know the run and then there's quacks cables in here, which is weird but basically yeah. These are the the signal, uh data cables and then here are the power cables. Now, let's look on the other side, oh so, by the way, if you look in here, it tells you the um.

It tells you that the thing here - uh the power output and what is it 210 amps max - continues at 400 right. So that's about 80 kilowatt, which means that these are. These are either like really early first generation chargers that were able to do 80 kilowatts, or these are the urban chargers that that are rated at 75 kilowatt right, and so maybe the only difference between those urban chargers and then the regular chargers that duke, i think They can serve like 150 call. It is that they use one cabinet to charge one car at those, the 150 kilowatt ones and then on the urban ones.

They split this cabinet into two and they can charge two cars and you know that's why you could only get 75 kilowatts on those right because they're now it's half the uh the chargers. Only six of these chargers per car. So here uh are the uh gateway board right. So this i think this.

What this has is the communication. It's got a little, i think that's a cell sim card in there and it's got an antenna that goes outside of this box. So this is getting info from the network. The the tesla network to let know that you know that there's cars and which cars are there and you know how to charge for the thing or whatever, and then these boards over here are the supercharger controller pcb a right.

So it's got two because obviously it's got two chargers on here right and it controls every one of these chargers through these cables in here and then this one seems to not have all those. So maybe this is just using certain features. Uh maybe just like these are, can, although these ones seem to no these. These were connected here, and i think these are broken off.

These are a bit beat up, and someone already took this off. I didn't take that off. Uh. Other interesting things is that they're, using like regular one and a quarter, one and a half inch, just regular, copper tubing uh to do the water cooling on here the lines right and then they all run well.

Actually they don't run parallels. They here's one. Okay, one line that goes into this charger and then from this charger it goes into the bottom one and then the bottom one goes in here and then it goes into that one okay. So maybe every two of these are in parallel right.

So so two in series and then the rest of them are in parallel. Probably that's what it is and then here's the dc side. It's weird uh, both sides, the positive and the negative, is going through a contactor and it's weird because they're using two types of contactor, this black ones are, i think, are tycho contactors and i think these are kilowatt contactors. I think they're two different brands from what i remember at least on our diy thing, but yeah they're, there's they're mixed in here.
Some are white, some are black and they seem to be connected. Both positive and negative are through contactors and fuses right. So they are. They have the ability to disconnect physically disconnect the chargers uh if something goes wrong or it's to ramp up power.

I don't i don't really know. I don't know what that one is over there uh. Maybe that's a shunt. That's the thing that lets.

It know how much power it's going through, that cable in there right uh this. So this is the dc side. Oh that's weird! This is the dc side, but the dc side comes over here on this side. How does it change? Oh, i guess with long cables.

So there we go, this is a supercharger early supercharger. I think this is first generation superchargers um. I don't really know what to do with them. I don't even know how to get these working um.

I know there have been several people that have gotten these working uh and it'd be interesting because yeah, basically you just parallel a bunch of these and then you can get so 12. Imagine 12 kilowatt you put two of these. Then you can charge your your tesla at home at uh. You know 24 kilowatt uh or you do three and then you 30, or maybe four of these will do like a 50 kilowatt.

So you could do like a 50 kilowatt charge, supercharger at home, that's possible to do right, except you know, then your utility might not like if you're pulling so much power out of the thing they might hit you with like premium rates, and maybe i don't know You know here, i know i'm in this building. This building uh itself has a three-phase, but it's limited to 100 amps. As far as i know, these, all these suites have a hundred amp fuses that feed this panel right here, and so i wouldn't even be able to power that entire thing right uh. I guess i could do the math 100 amps and see you.

Can you see that this is a sub panel? It doesn't even have the main three uh face. Um breakers in here. This is our in the electrical room over there, so yeah and by the way here on in this building that i have you know, it's got three phase um service. I am capped at 20.

Kilowatts. If i go above kilowatts, then it goes into another rate: uh. That goes much much higher right and if i do that three times in a month or something then they will go, maybe i think they forced me to get like a different plan or something like that. They they told me that when i set up uh my service here at this way so yeah this is this big big power, even though this are like old, and these are not really the the big ones.
If you think about it, i think the newer versions of this are like 250 kilowatt or something so that means the every single one of these chargers has to be twice as big. So, instead of doing 30 amps dc output, then they probably could do like 60 amps and that's how uh and then each one of those cabinets will probably do one car right. So the v3 - i think superchargers - can do like some crazy, like 250 kilowatt or something like that, and it would make sense - i guess so anyways if i'm just spitballing here i'm this is just observational thing. I obviously don't know what the hell i'm talking about.

If you do know posted the comments, we will all like to learn about these things. I find these extremely interesting and to have them here and play you know it's just cool. I don't know if you have any ideas what to do with these. If you know anybody that can figure out or has figured out the protocols to get these working and stuff, you know um, let them know and - and maybe i it'd be cool - to get one of these working right even at a at a reduced rate.

You know - maybe here like like 20 kilowatt, and i could put one of these boxes in a pallet and put it outside and maybe put it on charge point so that people can come and charge here every once in a while uh yeah, i'm down for all Those ideas, i think it would be fun to explore those sort of things all right. Thank you for watching this video guys uh stay busy. Remember i promote diy stay busy, building things doing things uh and learning, and we'll see you guys on the next video bye.

16 thoughts on “Private supercharger possible”
  1. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars DIY IN THE GHETTO says:

    With smaller lines going to the charger cord needs cooling they get very hot. If the cord was the same size as the incoming wire then people wouldn't be able to handle it and it would be to heavy.

  2. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Taehwan Lee says:

    Hi, I have a quick question here. Tesla battery cells are round shape so there are spaces between each round battery cells right? then could we use spaces between each of battery cells?
    for example, put some liquid into a tiny rubber tube and put that into the spaces to cooling down or heating up sort of like that. does it make sense?

  3. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Rob Gater says:

    Thanks. That's awesome to see. Yeah big pain to get running again, i reckon you would have to redesign your own controller. Ie. Not orth it. Power company would absolutely crack the shits if you connected that to their grid 🤣🤣

  4. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars KD9ACO says:

    My speculation is each one of those chargers is just signaled with standard J1772 protocols and the signals to each one is from the control board. I always thought the chargers were the exact same ones as the original Model S, just run in parallel to up amperage. There may be some signaling that has to come in to tell it how much power to provide and that would mirror however Tesla does that in the cars.

  5. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Tony says:

    Just wondering…have you notified the fire department what you store in case there is a fire? It's a good thing to do. They put it into their database. When fighting a fire, they know what to expect and how to fight the fire. Good idea to put a warning sign on the outside too. Especially when storing chemicals.

  6. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Jon McNabb says:

    Where are you going to get 480, 3 Phase? The cost on those isn't cheap to install…. Looks like a bunch of RS 232 connections. I would bet you can connect with a laptop serial connection.

  7. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars mike strain says:

    It would be cool to take the charging units out and match them to some battery so they could be charged up at off peak hours or when your solar had extra. you could have them set up at your house shop and that way you would actually be charging from the battery and the speed of charge would depend on your battery. also could run the cooling through your hot water like a pre heat but you would be paying for the heat so it would be good to try to use it

  8. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Mike says:

    They use bigger cable because the wire amperage is derated when it's installed in underground conduit. The amperage rating is determined by number of wires in the conduit and the size of the conduit. There is nowhere for the heat to go with wire installed in an underground environment.

  9. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Simon Gibson says:

    You may get lucky on some of the GitHub or Tesla forums with gaining access to the chargers control or swapping out some of the controller boards to ones that people have created with open source firmware.
    The 3G is now obsolete or very soon will be but since you will be converting it to private use you wont need it to communicate back to the mother-ship!

  10. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Joshua Wheeler says:

    It gets smaller because 2 cars can charge from one box and as you know you have big losses when you run high current dc over any length that heavy gauge wire tries to make up for that

  11. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Ol A says:

    What a shame, I've started to watch you as a DIY guy who made WW EV, and now he is promoting commercial grade solutions for 50-100k on 5-10 last videos …. disappointed. How about converting already existing ICE car to EV??? Lost your spirit, money talks?

  12. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Simon Gibson says:

    Thanks for posting this. I haven't seen a Tesla DC charger inside… Yet! I have seen some of the ABB DC chargers. I was fortunate to spot the ABB units when I visited Iceland in 2018. Amazing that such a small country the size of Kentucky and a population of about 340,000 people has a network of 15 DC chargers!
    Anyway, the Tesla DC first generation do indeed have the same charger that was installed in the early Model S Tesla. I suspect that the firmware in the chargers is probably a bit different. The gateway unit has a 3G SIM card that permits the mother-ship (Tesla) communicate with the station and authorize the cars to charge… Or not if the car is de-registered from the Tesla system!
    The other boards are probably to manage the coolant and communications between the individual chargers and the cars that are plugged in.
    In the Model S, some vehicles actually had two of those charger units and one is slaved off the first charger providing the car with the ability to charge at 80A,240VAC. So some of the Tesla Wall Connectors actually can permit 80Amp of AC to charge your car!!!

  13. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars The009 says:

    My best guess would be the heavy cable is used because DC has a higher loss then AC over a run, so the longer run the heaver the cable you want to use for less loss. This keep any heat underground from forming. While the cable outside is short, and air cooled so if it gets warmer the air can cool it down easier.

  14. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Matthew Stevenson says:

    The new ones are 250kw. I bought a used Model S a few weeks ago just haven't shared it on Facebook. These would be great for commercial use! I have seen a video on here where a guy had one installed in his garage.

  15. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars George Uy de Ong II says:

    My best guess for why the output cables have a large gauge because they account for a voltage drop.

    Also, that blue component that was near on the top section of the enclosure, looks like a LEM current sensor.

  16. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars dreamkiss4u says:

    i think the wires are initially thicker in the starting due to those parts of the wire heats up way more than the further parts of the wire since that is where its first distributing the power, so they thicken that part if the wire a bit more….its sort of when you point your thermal camera when you are testing your battery packs and you see the starting connections get much hotter in just that specific part and the rest is a bit cooler.

Leave a Reply to Tony Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.