Recent content by ka9q

Yes, several looked like work trucks. That's got to be it.

I just used that site. It was almost completely iced, with only one other actual Tesla actually charging. I hope that it was only because of the lateness of the hour, but it looked like they went out of their way to block the Tesla spots. Plenty of regular spots nearby, empty. Fortunately there...

It's possible they want to charge more at the higher power levels to recover their utility demand charges. They can be substantial.

I used this location for the first time a few days ago. It can be a bit hard to find because of the nearby construction fencing in the parking lot.

I'm curious, ZoomsandVroom, what delivery voltage do you get at work? Most 3-phase business customers I know are large enough to take it at 277/480V (or higher), but I suppose there's a significant slice of the customer base big enough to need 3-phase but not big enough to need it at 480V. I do...

Anybody know how the 14-50 outlet became the standard for Tesla charging? The 14-50 has a neutral blade that EV chargers (HPWC or J1772) don't need, but I strongly suspect the NEC requires that the 14-50 be wired with a neutral. (If it doesn't, it should. Plugging a different load that does...

This is quite plausible. Grid tie inverters are required to have all sorts of safeguards to avoid feeding power into a dead or damaged grid. If the voltage or frequency is too high or low, it's supposed to disconnect and wait for it to restabilize before reconnecting. So I can easily believe...

A posting on one of these Tesla forums said that North American Superchargers actually consist of stacks of ordinary in-car chargers wired in wye in groups of three across the 277/480V supply. So if these really are the same chargers, a car's internal charger ought to be able to accept...

That's something I've been unclear about for some time. So you pay three separate demand charges every month, one for each rate period, and not just the largest of the three? That sure adds up fast. Does Tesla or the utility own the transformers at their supercharging sites? The utilities...

Any ideas what was going on there yesterday, March 11? My nav screen showed this site as temporarily out of service. The Del Mar Heights site was shown as reduced service. All the others in the San Diego area were normal.

Sometimes you can tell by feeling the cable and/or connector to see if it's warm. It's not reliable since they're black and can also get warm in the sun, and they might not get warm at low power. But they definitely get noticeably warm in the dark at full power. That's for V2. No personal...

Speaking of technical data during charging, one important piece of engineering information accumulated internally by every electric car with a high voltage battery pack (i.e., every electric and hybrid car) is a list of individual module voltages. It's critical that they're matched, because...

Am I the only engineer who noticed the disappearance of the actual battery volts and amps during supercharging a few years ago? There's plenty of room on the screens to give us everything: volts, amps, kilowatts, accumulated kilowatt hours, accumulated fake, er, rated miles, rated miles per...

Several other people have remarked on the small font sizes on many pages. Yes! I'm 63, pre cataract surgery, and I'm having this problem too. Not only is the font small, the user manual uses a grey font! Only the emphasized text is white. Ridiculous! You usually have to brighten the display...

Actually, this could explain the power ramping we also sometimes see during supercharging. Some pretty heavy and potentially damaging currents flow through that connector and port, and by varying them you can measure the voltage drop at different current levels. Communication between charger and...