13 kW not a Supercharger

[IronQQQ]

I've come to the decision that I should just avoid any 120/150 kW Supercharger that is more than 50% full and just go to 72kW urbans instead. Anytime i go to a high usage 150 kW charger in SoCal, which is basically all of them, I charge slow as heck.

Today's charge irked me a lot. I thought the power is split between two stalls, so I chose 1B as 1A was empty. The station was at 11/12 stalls used with my car being the 11th car at around 30% SOC. I pulled 35 kW and I was irked at the low charge rate as I had no neighbor to split the power.

I'm disappointed as I chanced it to go to Cucamonga SC vs Fontana SC which is 72kW urban. I know that I will get 69 kW there with only 10/24 stalls used since power is not shared. My plan at Cucamonga was to hopefully pull 100 kW and grab 80 miles in 10 mins and leave. Fontana is slower and I really needed to get back home quick.

Then another 3 backs into 1A and plugs in. I can see the power immediately drop to 13 kW. 13 kW! I'm in a 3 LR and that car does 11 kW at home Level 2 charging. After 10 few mins I lose my patience and just leave. I was there a total of about 20 mins and got a paltry 30 miles added.

At first I thought my power was shared with stall 2A/B or something with only 35 kW but when 1A made me drop to 13kW, that made me think the SC can't provide 150 kW between two stall at high utilization rates.

 

[ewoodrick]

You do know that at a 120/150kW Supercharger, you should only get throttled to 35kW for about 15 minutes, until the paired car starts dropping rate.

 

[Saghost]

Sometimes a site has something going on that limits the overall power input, and you can encounter damaged/worn equipment and thermal limiting at any time, though my experience this summer was that this was less common than it was last year.

 

[jboy210]

I usually charge at 72 kW urbans because they have better availability. And charging at 72KW is a whole heck of a lot faster than charging at 0.0 KW while waiting in line.

 

[T3slaOwner]

I've come to the decision that I should just avoid any 120/150 kW Supercharger that is more than 50% full and just go to 72kW urbans instead. Anytime i go to a high usage 150 kW charger in SoCal, which is basically all of them, I charge slow as heck.

Today's charge irked me a lot. I thought the power is split between two stalls, so I chose 1B as 1A was empty. The station was at 11/12 stalls used with my car being the 11th car at around 30% SOC. I pulled 35 kW and I was irked at the low charge rate as I had no neighbor to split the power.

I'm disappointed as I chanced it to go to Cucamonga SC vs Fontana SC which is 72kW urban. I know that I will get 69 kW there with only 10/24 stalls used since power is not shared. My plan at Cucamonga was to hopefully pull 100 kW and grab 80 miles in 10 mins and leave. Fontana is slower and I really needed to get back home quick.

Then another 3 backs into 1A and plugs in. I can see the power immediately drop to 13 kW. 13 kW! I'm in a 3 LR and that car does 11 kW at home Level 2 charging. After 10 few mins I lose my patience and just leave. I was there a total of about 20 mins and got a paltry 30 miles added.

At first I thought my power was shared with stall 2A/B or something with only 35 kW but when 1A made me drop to 13kW, that made me think the SC can't provide 150 kW between two stall at high utilization rates.View attachment 449714

That sucks. I assume it was either a failure of some sort or possibly a problem with high utilization over the site. Have you heard of other reports like this that would make it sound like there are site limits?

I stopped at a Sheets last night that has Superchargers. A large storm had passed through a few minutes before. While I'm sitting there the power went out for the entire Sheets. Fortunately I was in my ICE truck and this was a bathroom stop for me. Had I been in the model X I would have gotten maybe 10 minutes of charging and might have been stuck! When I drive the X through here I'm nearly always charging at this location (It's in the middle of a 125 mile trip) and typically I've got no more than 10% remaining. So 25-30% would get me to another charger but in the opposite direction! I wonder if the chargers continue to show up on your in car map if they are all offline? Even if they showed up as being "full", I would plan to stop here to charge not knowing the site was down rather than just full.

 

[Saghost]

That sucks. I assume it was either a failure of some sort or possibly a problem with high utilization over the site. Have you heard of other reports like this that would make it sound like there are site limits?

I stopped at a Sheets last night that has Superchargers. A large storm had passed through a few minutes before. While I'm sitting there the power went out for the entire Sheets. Fortunately I was in my ICE truck and this was a bathroom stop for me. Had I been in the model X I would have gotten maybe 10 minutes of charging and might have been stuck! When I drive the X through here I'm nearly always charging at this location (It's in the middle of a 125 mile trip) and typically I've got no more than 10% remaining. So 25-30% would get me to another charger but in the opposite direction! I wonder if the chargers continue to show up on your in car map if they are all offline? Even if they showed up as being "full", I would plan to stop here to charge not knowing the site was down rather than just full.

There'll be some lag as the failure report works its way up the chain, but shortly after the power dies, the site will change to "temporary closure" in the Nav system, with a circle-slash icon, and Navigation won't route through it.

You know, like the east coast of Florida, Georgia, and the Carolinas just did.

(Presumably it'll reroute you if it happens while that's one of your waypoints, but I haven't seen such a case or a detailed description of one.)

There's even an intermediate "reduced service" option they use sometimes.

 

[T3slaOwner]

There'll be some lag as the failure report works its way up the chain, but shortly after the power dies, the site will change to "temporary closure" in the Nav system, with a circle-slash icon, and Navigation won't route through it.

You know, like the east coast of Florida, Georgia, and the Carolinas just did.

(Presumably it'll reroute you if it happens while that's one of your waypoints, but I haven't seen such a case or a detailed description of one.)

There's even an intermediate "reduced service" option they use sometimes.

I wonder what happens if you've already set your trip with a charger as a destination which then goes offline. I would hope the car would alert you immediately so you can make other plans.

 

[Saghost]

I wonder what happens if you've already set your trip with a charger as a destination which then goes offline. I would hope the car would alert you immediately so you can make other plans.

I think it gives you a rerouting just like a traffic reroute, but I'm not 100% sure. There's actually a thread on the FB Model X owners group running right now of someone that seems to have happened to today - he was driving from somewhere New England ish down to Florida, and when he got to Delaware, it suddenly rerouted him down I-81 - that's where I learned of the Florida and Georgia closures from (but I went out an took my own picture instead of stealing one from there.)