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Chademo Lvl 3 charge rate, price, worth it?

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I have 4 Chademo chargers 5 min down the road from where I live. It says that it is level 3 charging but I see so many varying experiences as to how much and how fast it will charge. I cant find anything online as to whether there are different amps for different Chademo level 3 stations.

The local company that owns all the Chademo stations on the island has different membership fees, but the $40 membership seems really great. $40 for 10 free charges and $5 per charge after that. That means I can charge every 3 days for free which I dont think I will even need to do. I will probably do a quick 30-60min session once during weekday and a however long I need to on Sundays. If I pay $40/mo for the membership, its only costing me about 5.7 cents/mi since I only drive around 700mi/mo.

Anybody know the average miles you'd expect to get from a level 3 Chademo for about an hours worth of charge?
 
Try to use the Plugshare app to get details, and drill down on the provider's website if necessary.

A lot of Chademo are limited to 50kW still (it's not a limitation of the standard, though). I'd poke around at the stations and watch what people are getting from them to see where they cap out...though they could potentially be limited by the vehicle connected.

Model 3 will take 50kW to a fairly high state of charge, but you won't be able to take that rate past 80% or so.

But assuming that you are below 80% the whole time, and at 50kW for the whole hour, you will add 50kW * 1hr = 50kWh, which is 50kWh/245Wh/rmi = 204 rated miles in an hour. EDIT: Based on @Zoomit's post above, it may be slightly lower in reality...not sure how much losses there are at 50kW out of the charger. EDIT: See below for the CURRENT limitation of Chademo.

V3 Supercharging Profiles for Model 3

Note that this is supercharging profiles so it may not be 100% identical on a Chademo.

As I've said before, personally, unless these chargers are located at a place you visit regularly, I really don't recommend L3 charging regularly...but up to you...your driving is limited enough you could do it:

Regarding costs:

You're getting an AWD.
If you are doing DC charging, you're going to end up consuming about 290Wh/mi. If you do L2 charging (home/AC), you're going to be at about 330Wh/mi. (These numbers take into account the vampire with your 8500 miles/yr of driving, and the mild conditions of Hawaii, but do not account for significant Sentry use or Cabin Overheat Protection (assumes you park in a shaded structure!))

So for 700mi/mo, DC Fast Charging, you're going to need to add 700mi/mi * 290Wh/mi = 203kWh/mo

So, at a minimum, if your rely ONLY on 50kW fast charging, you will need to spend a minimum of:

203kWh/mi / 50kW = ~ 4 hours at the DC Fast Chargers each month.

If the 50kW only actually nets you 190 rated miles/hr...that means efficiency is lower than I would expect by ratio of 190/204....

So that would mean you'd need to spend more like 4 hours 15 minutes at the DC Fast Chargers each month.

Another way to look at this is though you'll be driving 700 actual miles per month, you'll be USING about 800 rated miles per month (likely best case). It's kind of hard to be precise, but it's very likely you'll need to add substantially more rated miles than you drive each month.
 
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The CHAdeMO adapter is limited to 125A. Therefore, at low SOC and pack voltage, you will get no more than about 38kW and it will increase power as the pack voltage increases until it reaches 80% where you hit the normal Supercharge taper at 50kW. Not all CHAdeMO chargers output 125A, so you could always get less.
 
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There is a thread in TMC describing DC power throttling after some threshold number of charges. I don't know if this also applies to the Model 3 but I would not be surprised.

The described throttle was above 50 kW but it could impair resale value.
 
Try to use the Plugshare app to get details, and drill down on the provider's website if necessary.
Thank you so much for the in depth explanation and details! :D Unfortunately Plugshare doesnt show the exact specs of any of the Chademos on my island. This one just says level 3 next to it. And yeah, I posted 700 miles because I actually drive about 600, but was factoring in AC and driving like a monkey XD

There is a thread in TMC describing DC power throttling after some threshold number of charges. I don't know if this also applies to the Model 3 but I would not be surprised.

The described throttle was above 50 kW but it could impair resale value.
Do you mean the charging speed lowers after using it a number of times? Specifically to Chademo or the J1772 also?
 
Thank you so much for the in depth explanation and details! :D Unfortunately Plugshare doesnt show the exact specs of any of the Chademos on my island. This one just says level 3 next to it. And yeah, I posted 700 miles because I actually drive about 600, but was factoring in AC and driving like a monkey XD


Do you mean the charging speed lowers after using it a number of times? Specifically to Chademo or the J1772 also?
It happened to some S/X owners who heavily use DC fast charging. I haven't seen any examples of it happening to the 3 yet, but it's still a rather new car.

J1772 is just another standard for Level 2 charging, you won't have any issues there.
 
It happened to some S/X owners who heavily use DC fast charging. I haven't seen any examples of it happening to the 3 yet, but it's still a rather new car.

J1772 is just another standard for Level 2 charging, you won't have any issues there.
Ah okay. Thanks!

I've already ordered a Tesla Wall Connector and was thinking about returning it when it gets here to get the Chademo adapter.
I guess I might just install the 60amp wall connector. I didnt want to because of the price per kwh here. Its like 33 cents but whatever. Still saving a bit of money.
 
Ah okay. Thanks!

I've already ordered a Tesla Wall Connector and was thinking about returning it when it gets here to get the Chademo adapter.
I guess I might just install the 60amp wall connector. I didnt want to because of the price per kwh here. Its like 33 cents but whatever. Still saving a bit of money.
For 700 miles a month skip the wall charger and just charge off a 14-30 or 14-50 using the mobile connector.
 
CHAdeMO at Blue Ridge Electric in Lenoir, NC. Charging our P3D+. 158 mi

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The fastest I have charged is 44kw rate at Electrify America. It is about 1% of my LR AWD per minute.

The only time it was cheaper than my home charging was when I had to charge during the afternoon and demand rate was high at my house. It is more expensive most of the time, but charges 3.5x faster.

It is also a 5 minute drive from my house and on my route to the interstate, so it is definitely much better than the closest supercharger that is 25 minutes away and in the wrong direction from where I usually go. I have also used it on road trips where the supercharger is way out of the way. You can figure the supercharger is 3x faster, but if you have to drive an extra 50 minutes you lose the benefits...
 
FWIW, I just returned from a road trip on which I tested my CHAdeMO adapter at four different CHAdeMO stations. One of these (an Electrify America unit) didn't work for me, but the other three did. I got between 33kW and 46kW starting rates, but they did ramp down a bit above about 85% SoC (and got way low on one, which I charged to 100% SoC just because I was curious about what would happen). I posted about this experience here, if you care to check it out. Other posts in that thread may be of interest to you, too.

You said that you'd pay "$40 for 10 free charges and $5 per charge after that." In theory, if there's no time or kWh limit on a "free charge," then you could charge from 0% SoC to 100% SoC 10 times, which would give you 750kWh (in an LR; 500kWh in an SR+), for a cost of $0.053/kWh (or $0.08/kWh for the SR+). That's a crazy extreme example, though, and it would take a while to go from 0% to 100% on a CHAdeMO fast charger. The time I charged to 100% on my road trip involved starting at 67% SoC, and that took an hour. Of course, as charge rates taper as you get close to 100%, it likely would not take three hours to go from 0% to 100%.

Let's take some more reasonable figures: Suppose you charge from 30% to 80% in an LR. That's half the battery's capacity, so you'd be consuming 37.5kWh. Based on my recent road trip experience (which might not be reasonable -- see below), 37.5kW is a somewhat conservative guesstimate for the average charge rate, so each such charge would take about an hour. The Model 3 gets something on the order of 250Wh/mi driving efficiency, so that 37.5kWh will take you about 150 miles. Assuming 12,000 miles per year, or 1,000 miles per month, you'd need to charge like this 6.7 times per month, acquiring a total of 250kWh. At $40 per month for the plan, that works out to $0.16/kWh, which I gather is a pretty decent price for Hawaii. This analysis is pretty rough, though, and it does not take into effect the inefficiencies of the DC fast charging process -- on my recent road trip, for instance, my Tesla recorded having received 15kWh at one stop, but the station reported having delivered 16.3kWh. Using that ratio, the price in my scenario goes up to about $0.17/kWh. You'll also need to adjust this based on the amount of driving you do, vs. the 12,000 miles per year I assumed.

One big caveat here is that not all CHAdeMO stations can deliver the maximum of 50kW that the Tesla CHAdeMO adapter can theoretically handle. One of the stations I use delivered 33kW for the entire session. I've heard of stations that only deliver 25kW. If the provider you're considering uses such slow stations, that wouldn't affect the cost computation, but it would require spending more time at the station per charging session. You'll have to decide for yourself how much time you might reasonably want to spend at these locations.

You might also want to look into public Level 2 (J1772) charging facilities. I don't know about Hawaii, but here in Rhode Island, these do exist, and many of them are free (some are not, though). Some are near parks, movie theaters, malls, and other places where people often spend a lot of time, so they can be good ways to charge a car if you don't have good Level 2 charging infrastructure at home -- just charge when you see a movie, hike in a park, or whatever.

For all of these, check PlugShare for details. Charging speeds don't appear in the charge station descriptions, but review the check-in comments -- some users note their charging speeds.