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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...

I've noticed, as many of you probably have, that when you first connect an EVSE to a Tesla with charging scheduled at a later time, the Tesla still asserts READY and ramps up to a few amps. Then it drops READY to de-energize the cable and waits for the scheduled charging time. The whole process...

Yes, last night around 2130 we also saw only ~30 kW or so on our brand new model X. Although we were already at 80% we were close to the supercharger and decided to give it a try (first time we'd supercharged that car). Charging power was never higher than about 30-35 kW, and it ramped up and...

No signage, just the orange traffic markers in the stalls. I've never seen reserved spaces at that location.

Can you put notes to this effect on the charging stands?

I went back the other day, and once again those same two spots (2A and 6A) were coned off. So was a third (3A). I tried them all, and all three worked. So I set the cones aside. There was a Tesla employee charging a company model S, so I told him the situation and suggested that they check all...

Err...umm.... :) In North America, "raceway" is the formal, generic term for any structure that encloses and protects electrical cabling; "conduit" is the more common term in everyday use. The specific type of round conduit in your pictures is EMT ("electrical metallic tubing"). The square...

Yes, they were included in the total available count. But that's always been my observation even when a stall is actually broken. It makes the available count a lot less useful.

I stopped by Qualcomm today. Two of the stalls were occupied with markers indicating that they were down. After I took my car to nearly 80% at a remaining stall, on a hunch I tried the two "broken" stalls. Both worked fine, so I moved the markers to the grass.

You're quite right, but I like to keep an eye on the charger utilization as I drive and go for one of the 120/150 kW sites if the occupancy doesn't seem too high. A site less than half full is guaranteed to have at least one unpaired slot.

Don't forget that all of the newer supercharging sites down here (San Diego County) are "urban" (72 kW) models. If you're on a road trip pushing past the more crowded locations, you might want to target one that can provide a full 120 (or 150) kW when you arrive with a very low charge. That...

We also saw low charging powers at the Santa Ana site on a late Sunday evening return from Hollywood to San Diego. The site was less than half full, so I was able to pick an unpaired stall. When I should have been getting >100 kW I was only getting maybe 38 kW. I eventually gave up and continued...

In the guy's defense, he did refer to the tourist areas of San Diego. Having lived here for 28 years I think I know what qualifies: Mission Bay, Sea World, Balboa Park, the Gaslamp, the Convention Center and Old Town. There's only one Supercharger site anywhere near those areas, namely the one...

I wonder if part of the reason are the GPS tracking and remote control features of the Tesla. But they're not unique to Tesla, so I wonder if other cars with these features also have lower theft rates.\

I set it to 100% on road trips not so much to avoid idle fees, but to take advantage of extra charge time should I take longer to eat, go to the bathroom or simply walk around to stretch my legs. My #1 wish for the various trip planners is an option to let me manually vary the time I want to...

Which is why the site has always been so unpopular, judging from the free-stall counts in my car.

Better than my experience. The one time I got a message that supercharging had been interrupted, I went out to discover that a pickup truck had veered off the freeway, hit the electronics cabinet I was using that was directly behind my car, and threw it maybe 20 feet. Somehow my car was...

I stopped by this evening and tried stall 3A. My car said simply "ready to charge". Removed and reseated the connector to no effect. Moved to another stall that worked fine on the first try. I called it into Tesla.

Anybody been there today? The San Diego River is rising and I want to know if the site is at risk of flooding.

I'm actually happy to hear that superchargers are slowing down because of overheated handles. I've wondered for a long time what kind of protection is in those connectors. If I were designing them they'd have 1) thermal sensors and 2) the computers in the car and charger would constantly compare...

Well, somewhat less than 24...

Have those shipping containers been removed yet? On my first visit there, one of the Target people said they liked to park in that area. So with all the stalls now dedicated to EV charging, you'd think they'd want to free up the rest of the space.

Wow, Qualcomm (San Diego) didn't even make the top 10??

How about destination chargers in Bishop? On my one trip up US395 (from San Diego to Reno), Bishop was the natural overnight stop. But the hotel where I stayed with some friends had no charging facilities.

How does the total number of Teslas on the road compare with the total number of supercharger stalls over time?

I would use a conventional charger even when a supercharger spot was available IF: I was already at a high state of charge where I wouldn't make effective use of a supercharger; I would be there long enough to make it worthwhile (e.g., overnight at a hotel); I was on a long road trip where the...

I've got EV-TOU-5. Current winter tariff gives the super off peak rate as $0.09384/kWh.

Does the price go down during off-peak hours? For residential EV-TOU customers, SDG&E peak is 1600-2100 (4-9 pm) daily. Super-off-peak is 0000-0600 on weekdays and 0000-1400 on weekends, so weekends would be a more convenient time to check. During March and April, when there's a lot of solar...

Drove by there last evening (Thursday). No signs of recent activity; nothing has changed since the report of a few chargers having been unwrapped. There's no power; I checked by plugging in. It was raining but fortunately no sign of flooding. We did notice that the bottom floor of the parking...

I just stopped by to check the place out. The word has definitely gotten out, though there were always several empty spaces. I didn't get much power, only about 35 kW, but my car was already at 79% so I wasn't surprised. I also tested one of the Chargepoint L2 chargers. They're on 208V...

I wonder if the inspector dinged them on that placard that says "227/480V".

I drove through all three levels of the parking garage today. Lots of construction work everywhere, but no sign of supercharger work. On the far end of the first floor of the garage I could see what might be a collection of equipment cabinets consistent with superchargers but they were far back...

192 A * 480V * sqrt(3) = ~160 kW, assuming unity power factor. The output is 72 x 2 = 144 kW, so the efficiency is ~90%. Sounds about right. If the system were overloaded to 72 x 3 = 216 kW, that would be 1.5 * 192 = 288A per phase, while the continuous breaker rating is only 250 A.

Could be any of those things; I wouldn't be able to tell without some testing with the right equipment.

That's correct. In the spring, there's a lot of morning-midday solar production but HVAC loads are low. Especially on the weekends.

All modern high power electronic loads have active power factor correction, so you can take kVA as being equal to kW.