Quebec Circuit Electric shortcoming

[lance]

Although I admire that Hydro Quebec is making an effort to help build-out the charging network in the province, it does have some shortcomings. In the city of Montreal you can get pretty cheap parking downtown if you plug your car in to one of the CE stations, if you're lucky enough to find one open that doesn't have gas cars parked in it!

But here's a little detail I noticed yesterday. We plugged into a CE station in Westmount to go out for dinner. Two hours and seven minutes plugged in yielded 2.75 kWh of charge for a total cost of $1.85 CDN! That's cheap parking but expensive electricity. The car was reporting up to 6 kW of charge rate possible on the connection but the actual charge was nominal. I wonder if this is a common occurrence. If so it doens't bode well for the massive increase in EV's in the area that depend on these stations for primary charging due to lack of a driveway.

Has anyone else come across this type of low charge rate issues with the CE street chargers?

 

[ATPMSD]

I cannot offer anything on point as I am not up your way, but I have noticed when I plug into a 6 kW source the car shows 6 kW. While sitting in my car finishing my coffee I note the time to charge to the SOC that I have set and it calculates out to a rate of 4 kWh. When I head into the office the charge time changes and now I compute a rate of 5 kWh.

In my case it is the heater running.

 

[GtiMart]

The Circuit Electrique charges 1$ per hour which is not that high. If the station provides 6kW, you get 6kW. The rest depends on your car. If the car heats the battery or uses energy for cabin heating/cooling, there is less going to the battery. You still consumed that 6kW.

 

[lance]

Here's the report from HQ.

2.75 for just over 2 hours.

 

[UncleCreepy]

I have never had any isssues with the CE charging stations so far, except them being ICEd. The car probably correctly reported the max current you can get from the station, however if you only got 2.75 kWh in more than two hours, then chances are that the car just didn't demand the available power. That can be due to an already almost full battery or maybe the max current that the car will use was dialed down.
Even if you had consumed the energy for heating or cooling as @GtiMart suggested, the receipt from CE would still show the energy that the car consumed regardless whether it was for actual charging or heating/cooling. So you just wouldn't get as much energy into the battery but you'd still get 6 kW (the station is actually marked as 7.2 kW, but that's a different story) from the station.
My best guess is that you (possibly inadvertently) dialed down the max current in the car.

 

[GtiMart]

I agree with you @UncleCreepy , either charging was totally stopped or Amps were toned down. At the end of the day the station charges 1$ per hour as soon as the car is plugged, whether it's charging or not.

 

[lance]

Interesting but not very good PR from Electric Circuit especially if you are counting on these kinds of urban charging options as your primary source of power. For the record I parked at about 50% SOC. On our block of NDG alone there are 6 EVs who depend on the urban charging as primary power. Not a good selling point moving forward if one cannot count on charging rate.

 

[Earl]

A possible cause for your drawing less current could be that the Tesla detected that the CE circuit was flakey and dropped its current draw for safety. One would have to monitor the charging while it was happening to be sure.
If the car detects a significant voltage drop when it starts drawing current, it sometimes reduces its current draw to prevent overheating and fire if there is a bad wire or connection somewhere upstream.