New photos from PlugShare. Still not operational. I expect they will get power once the light poles are installed
Supercharger - Bethel, ME
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Fully iced on arrival but all left as soon as I plugged in
Fully iced on arrival but all left as soon as I plugged in
eladts
Member
Maybe they were afraid they will get Coronavirus from the radiation of your car charging.
The navigation system will route you through Bethel if necessary. However, it projects zero minutes of charging time there. I guess this is a firmware bug that probably applies to other locations.
In this instance, if I were really to stop for only 0-1 minutes, I would be close to 0% at arrival, not 19%
In this instance, if I were really to stop for only 0-1 minutes, I would be close to 0% at arrival, not 19%
ModelNforNerd
Active Member
That could prove to be problematic in extreme hot or cold weather. The cable runs are probably a little long, which leaves these chargers open to some voltage loss.
I went last Tuesday and never got over 72kW, even with a warm battery under 50% SoC.
RTPEV
Member
I'm not a huge Supercharger user, but I consider myself pretty "lucky" when it comes to getting great charge rates out of Superchargers, especially compared to what I've seen posted on Plugshare and here on the fora. But yesterday was one of my rare long trips and I noted several interesting observations. In all instances I was not sharing a charger with anyone, and my battery was properly conditioned upon arrival (I'm not sure it explicitly had to condition the battery nor not).
At one stop, my charge rate appeared to start out at a reasonably high rate (over 120kW) so I went into the store and when I came back out, the charge rate was pegged at 72kW. I switched to a different stall and the rate came back to 120kW+.
Then at another stop I again had an initially high charge rate, but then it again seemed to plateau at a lower charge rate that I had expected (versus a taper). Here is a charge of that second charge:
This is not a typical taper-off behavior with the plateau in the middle.
I also observed that the charge rates of the plateaus were suspiciously even--and familiar--numbers like the 72kW you mentioned (even though the plot above shows 99kW, I seem to recall the number in my car was around 96-97kW.
I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong (or point to a more authoritative source), but I know that the components inside Superchargers are actually the same (or at least similar) onboard charging units found in the vehicles themselves, each one with a capacity of about 12kW(ish), which means we see a lot of multiples of 12 in charge rates (72kW, 96kW, 144kW). It would appear to me that when your car is stuck at 72kW, that basically means that only 1/2 of the units are functioning. This may be be expected, in the event that you are sharing a V2 charger with another stall, or your car/battery is not capable of utilizing more than 72kW (cold battery, or high SOC), but it's also simply possible that the charging units have failed, although in my observation, the fail was not hard in that it had been initially working and then failed. So maybe it just overheated or something. Either way, I imagine the fail should be detectable by Tesla. It's frustrating that Superchargers seem to sit for days/weeks with crippled chargers, and there is no easy way to tell that a given stall is failing in this way.
With a V3 site such as Bethel, the architecture is slightly different, but it's basically the same idea. If some of the chargers in the cabinet are down, the behavior appears to be a steady, but reduced, charge rate.
Good news for me because this means I can bring my Model 3 when I'm attending the New England Forest Rally car race at Sunday River. I went last year and brought my wife's car because of the uncertainty of charging in the region. And good thing we did too, because Sunday River's destination charger was completely blocked off by Subaru Motorsports USA's vehicle trailers and service crew (a new kind of being ICE'd!), and the entire parking lot up there was blocked off by the other teams
Thanks for the info guys! Looks like a nice placement of this on the way to Rangeley Lakes region..
I've been here several times. a few of the spots are always iced, as I don't think there is that much parking and non EV owners have no idea not to park there.
Stopped by here two weekends ago (heading to Rangeley) - no ICEing - thank you Tesla/Irving Oil!
Big Earl
bnkwupt
Nice. That'll be the finishing touch. I was up there on Saturday and the concrete forms and capped wires looked like they were all ready to receive light poles.
The lighting has been installed and all stalls are once again available.
Big Earl
bnkwupt
I liked it better when it was dark. Bethel is starting to get some light pollution that makes stargazing more difficult. Gotta drive into the wilderness a ways to get really clean views.
ModelNforNerd
Active Member
I'm a few ridges to the southeast of Bethel, but between them and Mt. Abram in winter, I can definitely see the glow along the horizon.
