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Comment by jauntywundrkind | Hacker News Reader

Yeah, usb-pd Extended Power Range (EPR) would be neat. First thing I thought of, but more in a wishful thinking rather than genuinely hopeful way.

140W is already EPR; usb-pd classic only went up to 100W (20v × 5A), which I sort of expect is what we'll see. 100W really wouldn't be terrible; it wouldn't be fast but often that's not necessary.

One could easily sub in a 36V × 5A EPR solution, giving 180W.

EPR tops out at that 240W, which isn't bad (48V × 5A). It's be great to see.

I'd also love to see any sort of device dare to offer parallel charging; plug in two USB-C cables to charge twice as fast. Sounds silly, can be a little tricky, but I just want to see someone do it because why not.

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> I'd also love to see any sort of device dare to offer parallel charging; plug in two USB-C cables to charge twice as fast. Sounds silly, can be a little tricky, but I just want to see someone do it because why not.

This already exists, I have a power bank (Anker C300X DC) that does this. It has two 140W USB-C inputs that can be used simultaneously for charging at 280W.

That's so cool!

Crazy how popular 28V (140W) has gotten. I assume it's because there's a lot of 30V mosfets & passives. Going to 50V or 60V is admittedly a pretty big leap.

For a long time I've planned on combining some lipos & a 24V inverter to make a power station capable of powering my projector. But with the crazy good sales for power stations, I'll probably buy something. Not quite enough juice in this power pack, but man it's so tempting for no particular reason to get, just for this one fast-charging gimmick.

Hopefully higher voltages start showing up on the scene some day! USB-C 2.1 with EPR outlined was released May 2021; I really wasn't expecting such a long delivery pipeline. Ditto for Auracast, although I appreciated that was more a software problem than hardware market fit problem. It'd be interesting to have a review of how much if at all the actual delivery of Auracast has changed since "release"; I don't know a lot, but I poke through and the Zephyr IoT implementation has been under active development for years now, and, like, not at a slow pace either; it's hard to tell how much effort was making a spec first then making it all work, adapting & layering in new specs as they go. What an interesting story that would be to tell.

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