cross section of a high power electric car charging cable. the electric current is so high that the copper wires would overheat, but coolant flows through small tubes in the center of each wire.
another manufacturer uses these connections and color codes. their cable has fewer wires but the blue/brown color code for the large conductors confirms that this cable is for NACS which can handle either AC or DC.
I doubt the center is the safety ground, it's clearly not green/yellow (one of the tiny ones are) and all it has to do is deliver potential but no current. The slightest current in that wire, and everything trips off instantly.
@tubetime holy crap, is all of this so that it can support an essentially infinite/full duty cycle? I mean I’ve lugged 4160V cables and they don’t need this (I mean, yes, they’re AC and high voltage specifically to reduce current and the resultant heat from I-squared R losses, but still)
@tubetime isn't that excessively overengineered though? Since this is DC, there's no skin effect issue, wouldn't it be much simpler to use bigger cables (thus, with lower resistance)?
@vriesk bigger cables get really hard to wrangle. some cable designs have separate cooling tubes placed next to regular copper stranded wires. this one just puts the cooling lines in the center, which is super cool!
@tubetime yeah, there is some heavy lifting required to get the charging cable to your car. Even more when some a-hole tangled two or more wires at the same station and you need full reach to not rip out your car socket 😅
This is only at fast charging DC stations, 11-22kW AC charging is way thinner and not cooled…
@tubetime how are the hollow wires constructed? If they were basically little copper pipes, it would seem like they wouldn't allow the cable to be flexible enough to manipulate
@MLE_online i suspect they use a cable braiding machine. probably the same method used to make coaxial cables, only instead of a dielectric and center conductor, they pass the coolant tube into the machine. then lay down more than the usual 2-3 layers to build up the outer conductor.
@tubetime Generators often do the same with stator windings: they are basically pipes and distilled water is passed through them. I'm not entirely sure why conductivity of that water matters (after all its share of current will be very small, and it being AC would seem to obviate worries about corrosion). It seems that here the internal pipe is insulated?
@tubetime I always wondered how they would deal with the sheer amount of current running through. It never once occurred to me they could actually pump coolant through the center like that... That's... actually pretty smart.
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