Nice job. Thanks for inviting others to share details of their Alaska trips. My wife and I did the trip in a new Model S refresh that we picked up at the Lynnwood, WA service center and drove back home on the 6-15th of October, 2021, following basically the same route, but with stopping at hardly any of the same stops. The road was snow-covered and temperatures generally around freezing from not far north of Boulder Creek Rest Area, BC, almost all the way to Palmer, Alaska. RV parks were generally closed at this time of year, and we rarely got any charge from the fewer DCFC stations that were online back then.
The trip was 2407 miles from Bellingham to Fritz Creek, AK (outside of Homer), and used about 635 kWh (263 Wh/mile). We drove conservatively mostly at or even below the posted speed limit, and with the seat heaters on 2, the yoke heater, and climate set to 64 degrees and defog. Tires were the stock Continental all-season radials at 40-41 psi cold pressure. At home over the past year-and-a-half we have averaged 289 Wh/mile mostly because we are more generous with the heat in winter!
Anywhere to Prince George is easy. Superchargers every few inches. However, on October 7th, 2021 there was no supercharger in Prince George, and that morning we discovered that the destination charger at the hotel had tripped the breaker an hour or so after we had plugged in the night before. So we searched around and got a few hours of Level 2 at the forestry ministry, and limped 305 miles to Boulder Creek Rest Area using level 2 chargers in rest areas along route 16 (mainly at Savoy West). We had a chademo adapter but it would not work, or barely work at the DCFC stations. After the trip we learned that it needed a software update that could not be done over-the-air...
Iskut, BC and Red Goat Lodge were off-limits due to COVID in October 2021. So after sleeping in the car on mostly level 2 charging to 100% overnight at Boulder Creek Rest Area, we drove 161 miles to Bell 2 Lodge and spent two nights in a cabin there gaining a total of only 30% more SoC on a wobbly generator at a maximum of 12 amps and 108v for a full 48 hours (from 51-81%). That works out to an average of only 625 watts/hour! Some of that loss was due to cold weather, but by far most of it was due to the non-load following generator and the variable load at the lodge, because the next night we got closer to the predicted maximum amount of energy overnight parked outside at a 112v receptacle (1.18 kW/hr vs 1.34 kW/hr). However, that was enough energy at Bell 2 to easily make it another 149 miles to Dease Lake, BC. Bell 2 Lodge has a NEMA 6-30 208v receptacle in their shop that they might allow you to use, especially if you make prior arrangements. We didn't have a 6-30 adapter.
We overnighted in Dease Lake on a 112v engine heater receptacle at Northway Motor Inn, which gave us enough juice (39%-56%) to make it another 159 miles to Watson Lake, YT, where there was no DCFC yet (arrived with 14%). We charged to 100% overnight on a NEMA 14-50 receptacle at the Downtown RV park (and a stay in a motel across the street). Having a TT-30 extension cord would have saved driving back east 14 miles to Watson Lake, and back west the next morning because Nugget City has 30 amp service and cabins to stay in, but none of the receptacles at Nugget City are close enough to each other for a TT-30 Y-splitter to work without an extension cord (see below). The extra 28 miles driving was worth saving a day charging!
From Watson Lake we made it 245 miles to the DCFC in Marsh Lake, where our Chademo adapter seemed to work fine, even though we had plenty of remaining energy (22%) to make it the additional 27 miles to Whitehorse. The road was very slushy climbing out of Watson Lake, and the navigation suggested that we might not make it to Whitehorse at times... In Whitehorse we could not get the chademo adapter to work for more than about 10 minutes at any of the DCFCs, so ended up staying in a BnB and charging to 100% overnight with an adapter on the J1772 level 2 EVSE at the Ford dealership.
From Whitehorse we drove 95 miles to Haines Junction, YT (arriving with 70%) where we tried DCFC using the chademo adapter again, with no luck. We gained a 3% SoC at a TT-30 outlet in a small RV park adjacent to the FasGas station in Haines Jct. before continuing another 183 miles to 1202 Motor Lodge in Beaver Creek, YT where we spent two nights (arrived with 15%).
If I had discovered on the first day in Beaver Creek that I could have used our TT-30 Y-splitter at RV sites 88 & 89, we would have only needed to spend one night there. The Y-splitter has two TT-30 plugs that combine the 110v and 30 amps of the separate legs of power serving two adjacent campsite receptacles into 220v at 30 amps at a NEMA 14-50 receptacle. (At 30 amps, the car needs to be set to draw 24 amps. By default it will draw 32 amps with the NEMA 14-50 adapter plugged in- which *should* trip a breaker, or if it does not, it will be unsafe). I used the splitter on the second night, set the charging amps on the screen to 24, and we were at 100% in the morning. An intrepid traveler might figure out a way to do this sort of thing safely at other types of receptacles, which would have been useful on this particular trip.
From 1202 Motor Lodge we drove 247 miles to the Caribou Hotel in Glennallen, AK (arriving with 24%), where we hiked around on their nearby community trails while the car spent a few hours charging at one of the hotel's 50 amp RV receptacles (to 54%). Those receptacles no longer work for EVs, but a DCFC station has since been installed in Glennallen. There is also now "restricted access" charging with a CCS adapter at 20-24 kW in a bus barn in Tok, AK, if you make prior arrangements (see
PlugShare). The added charging at the hotel gave us enough energy to easily make it another 137 miles to Turkey Red in Palmer, AK (arrived with 19%), which has Tesla destination chargers and great food! We stayed at an inn down the street and charged to 100% overnight.
After a fine breakfast at Turkey Red, we drove 274 miles home to Fritz Creek, AK (arrived with 20%). The superchargers in Chugiak/Eagle River and in Soldotna were not yet online in October 2021.
Hopefully, posting about this trip will soon become a non-starter because the supercharging network will be built out. If the newer DCFC options now available are all working and you have a supported CCS adapter, it's almost already that way in the summer months.
