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Super Charging Etiquette
- Thread starter Tadara
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- etiquette Supercharging
RayK
Active Member
The definition of SoC when talking about an electric vehicle (EV) is "state of charge". I referenced the term in post #17 above. It's your car's battery charge level, equivalent to how much gas is in your tank.
BlueRocket
S90D HW3.0 MCU1 "No FSD 7 years" 2022.8.10.16
Just had someone start charging in my paired stall with 2 unpaired pairs avaliable. Does Tesla explain this to anyone when they purchase a new car? I just moved to an unpaired stall, grumbled a little, rather than try to explain... The person looked oblivious. Last time I explained to someone it took a while 
Tam
Well-Known Member
It’s a shame…. Just encountered an old fart, who (at 8 stall charger) pulls in adjacent (when 7 stalls available) and is just unwilling to learn… even when approaching politely. By the same token, they also took a big risk, attaching a charge handle that was buried in snow into their car. Guess they are fond of bricks.
RTPEV
Active Member
That's nothing compared to the Chevy Bolt that approached us at an ElectrifyAmerica charging station. We were having trouble with the 150kW station (which would have been adequate for our use had it been working properly), so we were just about to move to an open 350kW station when the Bolt pulled up and was going to take that stall. I explained to them the situation and asked them to please plug into station #3 (which showed unavailable on the EA app, but was functional--for unrelated reasons we had to use the app to initiate charging, so that stall wouldn't work for us either), or even #4 (the one we were at) as their car would probably get the full 50kW it was capable of accepting.
Oh, no, the lady told me, her Bolt was a "new" Bolt that could take 238 (the dealer said so!) so they needed to use the 350kW station! (note the 238 was the range!) I did get them to park in stall #3, but then they just took one of the 350kW connectors from the next stall and proceeded to plug in.
So again, I had to tell them that just because there were two connectors, that didn't mean they could both be used simultaneously (on that unit anyway--I know some EVgo 350kW units do support this). The lady was getting fairly irate telling me I didn't know how her Bolt worked (even though my wife had just traded her Bolt for the VW we were driving only a couple of months prior).
Fortunately by then stall #1 (another 350kW unit) had opened up, so we moved there instead and started charging, but while this couple was trying to get their charge initiated, a Polestar pulls into stall #2, plugs in the other cable and starts charging, which of course locked out the poor couple in the Bolt who were struggling to figure it out.
Finally the husband comes over and apologizes once he discovered that I was correct that you couldn't plug two cars into the same station and finally listened to reason about the fact that his car was only going to pull 50kW and that 238 was the range in miles.
I would consider it a lost cause trying to explain that to people. This is always going to be a problem with these sites that have different pieces of equipment at different power levels. People are going to take whatever stall is available and convenient, without bothering to read what power level all of the other ones have and what power level other people's cars around can take, etc. etc. So even though your information was accurate, it's just going to annoy people when someone is going around telling people how their cars work and what they're supposed to do with them.
There is far less issue with this if each site has the same type of equipment that's all at the same power level.
There is far less issue with this if each site has the same type of equipment that's all at the same power level.
I saw a few people plugged into V2 superchargers at a mixed site with plenty of V3s available in my last trip. I just take one of the free V3s. If someone takes the paired stall on the V2 I'm on, I just move my car. I'll only tell them if they ask why I moved. People must be willing to learn to listen.
Ok fairly new here had my mylr for a few months always try to skip a spot or go way by myself today went to a new charging location and everybody was being nice skipping spots then it got busy and people were parking in empty spots no prob then a lady pulls in next to me and not sure what she was doing but ended up leaving then another guy pulls in and starts charging i did notice my charge rate went down.. no prob.. then this guy in a model x was being a AH people were lined up waiting there turn and then the lady was was next to me that left came back and started backing in a spot well model x guy wasnt happy he raced around some normal parking spots and confronted her i was like wow.. then model x guy goes back around the parking spots hauling butt i was waiting for him to crash.. then when he got back other cars took his space in line.. this is the first time i have seen charging rage
Why just why!!! 36 stalls available out of 40, They have 150kw and 250kw but this guy parks right next to me 
. I'm on the left he's on the right...
. I'm on the left he's on the right...Are you sure it works like that? I think V3 has stalls grouped onto different transformers (say 1000 kW per 12 stalls on larger sites) and the entire group can only get 1000 kW. So if there are 7 cars charging on one group and only 2 cars charging on the other group, you want to charge on the group of stalls that only has 2 cars charging on it, because this guarantees you 250 kW, whereas charging on the other group of stalls, you may not get a full 250 kW if the charge rate of the other vehicles is high enough. But just how do you identify which stalls go to which transformer?
RayK
Active Member
I've not personally used a V3 station but this is where I got my information from:
Twinsies?Why just why!!! 36 stalls available out of 40, They have 150kw and 250kw but this guy parks right next to me
View attachment 911821
No, my M3 is gray his was blue. I think they look the same color because of the shadow.
Yeah, note the quote from the page: "A new 1MW power cabinet with a similar design to our utility-scale products supports peak rates of up to 250kW per car."I've not personally used a V3 station but this is where I got my information from:
1000 kW per cabinet, but there are more than 4 stalls per cabinet, and therefore, each vehicle may not get the maximum possible charge rate if there are more than 4 vehicles charging and all of the stalls are connected to the same cabinet. I've started a charge at all V3 supercharger and only gone up to about 160-180 kW before, as well as seen charge rates as low as around 70 kW -- at 50% SoC. And I think this is why. The sharing isn't as bad as it is on V2, with power sharing between two adjacent stalls that forces sharing if the car next to you + your car are trying to charge at a combined > 150 kW, but there is still sharing that goes on, and to avoid it, you have to be able to identify the stalls that are on the same cabinet.
Yep, that's the way it works, bigger transformers now. 250kW pedestals allow for them to all the running full speed.
The V2 pedestals, were a good idea, but charging density became so high that it effectively became a problem.
The "ide" behind the paired slots is that cars batteries don't stay at maximum rates for that long. So it was perfectly fine to but a car at 60% next to a car at 10%, both would be charging as fast as they could.
But they didn't implement a "this is the best place to plug into" algorithm and it became messy for drivers.
RTPEV
Active Member
I don't think this is quite right. There ARE 4 stalls per cabinet, so a cabinet can indeed supply 250kW to each of the 4 connected vehicles (or close to it), if it has enough input power. And that is where the limitation comes from. It can pull 350KVA in AC power from the grid, and an additional 575kW in DC power from "other sources", where the "other sources" could be other cabinets that have excess power, solar panels, or onsite battery storage. So there definitely is a limit at a given site, and like you said originally, there may only be a 1000KVA transformer servicing the entire site (even though it feeds 3 cabinets for example). But the site as a whole is capable of sharing whatever power is available across up to 7 cabinets (servicing 28 stalls). So for example, if there were 2 1000KVA transformers on site at a 24 stall site (6 cabinets), and each transformer supplied 3 cabinets, even though the one group of 12 might be maxing out the 1000KVA capacity of their transformer, they could still use any leftover power from the other group's transformer over the shared DC bus. Granted, it would be unlikely that you would see 12 vehicles pulling high amps all clustered together on the one set of 12 stalls and then the other 12 being relatively empty, but if that does happen, the site could effectively share that 2000KVA across all 24 stalls.
But you are correct that ultimately there probably is a power limit at a given site, and it is likely the size of the transformer(s) on site that enforce it as there is no way that anyone would size the grid connection to a given site based on 100% capacity at 250kW draw from every vehicle simultaneously. That would be very wasteful.
Well there's definitely a power limit at each site that can work to limit the maximum below 250 kW per vehicle. But are you sure every site is all drawing from one pool or is there some additional partitioning of resources beyond that?
RTPEV
Active Member
Up to 7 cabinets (28 stalls) can draw from a common DC bus that they all share. Except for the mega-sites that have 56 stalls (ever wonder why it's 56 rather than 64?), that pretty much covers the entire V3 site.
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