Except as reported many times in this thread, at Corning those temporary urban SCs max out at less than 60kW. I saw 58 on my last visit to corning
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Supercharger - Corning (6 V2 stalls)
- Thread starter ecarfan
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- California Supercharging USA
Except as reported many times in this thread, at Corning those temporary urban SCs max out at less than 60kW. I saw 58 on my last visit to corning
eprosenx
Active Member
I drove from Portland to the Bay area on July 13 and 14, then back up on the 20th and 21st. On the 13th it warned me that Corning was down for maintenance. Luckily it showed it as back up on the 14th (after an overnight in Ashland) and so I stopped there. It was full when I got there, but a spot immediately freed up. But then a line started forming behind me. One stall was down that day (someone put a sign on it).
When I came back through on the 20th, two stalls were down 2B and 3A (signs on both), and the spot I got (one of the permanent spots) 1A seemed marginal. It started out at like 34kW and never made it above 84kW even as I had an entire lunch there. Again there was a line at this site and so I moved as soon as I was done with lunch so others could use it as I had enough to make it to my next hop.
This charger is a serious bottleneck on a critical route with no other good options. It sounds like they are building Williams CA and they are perhaps also working on Redding. Both would make great alternative spots. Adding more stalls in Corning would be good too.
It is pretty frustrating, they really need to be vigilant about maintenance on a high use supercharger like this on critical routes with basically no alternatives. They should be data mining all the charging sessions that succeed to figure out what stalls are not working or are working sub-optimally. They should prioritize fixing these critical sites. The handles on some units looked well worn. Proactive replacement of the single wear component seems prudent.
Note that the "temporary" skid with two extra chargers is still there and functioning. The cabinet looks basically the same as the three permanent cabinets, but indeed, the nameplates must be different. Interesting on the choice of "urban" vs. regular superchargers. I wonder what the decision criteria is for one vs. the other?
I really wish we knew more about how Superchargers work internally. I wonder if all the superchargers at a given site can communicate with each other and perform load shedding such that they keep the total load to the utility transformer or the utility itself below a specific level? Like say the site has a 500 kVA transformer but they now have eight stalls and maybe they have committed to the utility they won't draw more than 300 kVA (for power planning purposes for the utility) and so the superchargers communicate with each other to keep their aggregate load below that amount?
Or perhaps the superchargers need to throttle down to to various temperatures (in the rectifier modules, the cable to the car, etc...) So with it being so hot and with continuous use car after car the superchargers have to throttle back to avoid overheating?
When I came back through on the 20th, two stalls were down 2B and 3A (signs on both), and the spot I got (one of the permanent spots) 1A seemed marginal. It started out at like 34kW and never made it above 84kW even as I had an entire lunch there. Again there was a line at this site and so I moved as soon as I was done with lunch so others could use it as I had enough to make it to my next hop.
This charger is a serious bottleneck on a critical route with no other good options. It sounds like they are building Williams CA and they are perhaps also working on Redding. Both would make great alternative spots. Adding more stalls in Corning would be good too.
It is pretty frustrating, they really need to be vigilant about maintenance on a high use supercharger like this on critical routes with basically no alternatives. They should be data mining all the charging sessions that succeed to figure out what stalls are not working or are working sub-optimally. They should prioritize fixing these critical sites. The handles on some units looked well worn. Proactive replacement of the single wear component seems prudent.
Note that the "temporary" skid with two extra chargers is still there and functioning. The cabinet looks basically the same as the three permanent cabinets, but indeed, the nameplates must be different. Interesting on the choice of "urban" vs. regular superchargers. I wonder what the decision criteria is for one vs. the other?
I really wish we knew more about how Superchargers work internally. I wonder if all the superchargers at a given site can communicate with each other and perform load shedding such that they keep the total load to the utility transformer or the utility itself below a specific level? Like say the site has a 500 kVA transformer but they now have eight stalls and maybe they have committed to the utility they won't draw more than 300 kVA (for power planning purposes for the utility) and so the superchargers communicate with each other to keep their aggregate load below that amount?
Or perhaps the superchargers need to throttle down to to various temperatures (in the rectifier modules, the cable to the car, etc...) So with it being so hot and with continuous use car after car the superchargers have to throttle back to avoid overheating?
Similar problems to the above in Corning yesterday. Only 3 of the 6 superchargers were functional. The 2 temporary destination chargers both worked ok. Corning is SUCH bad news, it is the smallest station on northern I5, inadequately maintained, yet an essential stop. Another, larger station in either the gap north or south of Corning can’t come soon enough!
Pretty sure I'm in the top 1% of users of this station - pretty much at least every week early morning for the last couple years on the way up from Oakland and, until i got a proper charger onsite at my destination in Anderson, on the return trip as well. In what has probably been 75-100 charges there, i think i've encountered an actual jam up twice, though once was in the last two weeks. Charger #2 was problematic for months and has now been shut for a while with nothing more than an informal hand scribbled piece of paper. I'm surprised that Tesla, seeing the issues in a station that is clearly is wothout any alternative on a major trunk route, hasn;t been able to manage to come up with either a solution. Or at least a better sign
I'm on such autopilot for the quick starbucks refuel there that at least twice i didn't notice and came back 15 minutes later only to realize i hadn't put a watt in it!!
I'm on such autopilot for the quick starbucks refuel there that at least twice i didn't notice and came back 15 minutes later only to realize i hadn't put a watt in it!!
eprosenx
Active Member
Good data! Thanks!
I am surprised they let that charger be so bad for so long. I wonder if they don’t have spares for the older charging cabinets and are focusing on deploying new model chargers (but of course you could deploy some new chargers on top of old ones in order to replenish spare stock).
I suspect you always hit that station at off peak hours. It is not a commuter station, it is a long haul traveler station and so I suspect that lunch hours on high travel days are it’s peak load.
Yeah, it's generally sometime in the 7 to 9am range and usually early in the week, definitely off hours. The times i have seen jams have been afternoons on thursdays and fridays
Speaking of Anderson, coming back last week from a camping trip in Lassen, we opted to lunch in Anderson at the Puerto Vallarta mexican restaurant next to the freeway. The Best Western next store is listed on Plugshare as having a 70A J1772 charger available for non-guests for $5 flat for a few hours. We were in the Model 3 LR that could only take 48A max, but 9.6 kw (48A x 200V) over planned two hour lunch with friends that worked out perfectly - top up our battery enough to be able to bypass the lunch congestion at Corning on the way down and reach Vacaville. We did end up doing a 5 min touch and go at Corning as we saw a few stalls open up as we passed, to let us reach Vacaville with a 13% buffer instead of 8%, but it wasn't critical IMO.
Receptionist lady at the Best Western lobby was nice and friendly, and gave us a code first to make sure the charger worked, before we came back to pay her. Only caveat is that the parking spot in front of the charger can be occupied; but in our case, the cord was just long enough to reach the next parking spot which was free.
With Williams coming online, I think the best way to help Corning is to get Redding online too. Maybe if everyone here requests Redding Tesla will push it up! Redding should have been done long ago, as this is where 299 and 44 come in from Eureka and Lassen Park/Reno/Klamath Falls. It's a big intersection and should be covered.
Here is the link: Charging Partners | Tesla
Here is the link: Charging Partners | Tesla
That link is for suggesting destination chargers, not Superchargers. And it'd be best to continue any discussion of Redding in the thread for that site:
Supercharger - Redding (permit not found, exact location not known, on the map for 2019)
Thanks,
Bruce.
e-FTW
New electron smell
Have a great time. Lassen is one of my favorite parks. Hopefully Corning cooperates.
e-FTW
New electron smell
It did, eventually...
Here is my trip report as it relates to this Supercharger:
tl;dr Go for Chico on weekends instead of Corning. It is a ghost town and has 14 stalls.
- Since we were driving up on a Sunday, we did not stop in Corning as it would have meant waiting in line
- So we did San Francisco -> Chico Supercharger (completely empty) -> Manzanita Lake Campground cabins*
- Nav then takes you through some back roads (Manton Rd) across the foothills and you wonder if you would ever be found if something went wrong. LOL
- Spent two full days there without charging, with one day where we drove the length of the park all the way up to Lassen Peak (2500’ elevation change)
- Drove back to Corning on Wednesday and got there at about 1:30pm, 3 other cars already charging. A fourth and fifth pulling in as I plugged in to 3A. Middle chargers not occupied (are those the defective ones?)
- We were only getting 36kw. Gentleman in the charger nearest to the transformers was leaving and recommended I move to his 1A as he was getting a good charge rate.
- We did and got full speed. 1B was empty. Too hot for me to figure out if 3B was occupied we bolted for the Starbucks.
- Pro-tip: On the other side of the fenced-in transformer area there is a supplemental temporary charger stall (you know the ones, they are on a metal pallet). I had not noticed it until someone else went to charge there. So that is a good thing to see there. Wonder if it has one or two cables, I forget.
*If you are going to Lassen and like to camp, but may not want to deal with the tent I recommenced those cabins. They are great. But keep it to yourselves, I want to go back and they are already quite popular...
They are the urban chargers and the last time there I couldn’t exceed 57kW on them.
e-FTW
New electron smell
Interesting. I had seen such temp installations before, but they were the standard (120/145kw) type. But that was before the urban (72kw) SCs became a thing.
Still better than nothing I guess. Corning needs some big time love from Tesla though! Or to have a big beautiful site open up in Redding.
This. I know this is the Corning thread, and I don’t want to offend anyone, but I dislike this charger relatively strongly.
eprosenx
Active Member
Getting Williams online will reduce a lot of load on Corning. Redding would be fantastic as well, but that is probably further out.
I am kind of pissed that Tesla has not fixed the existing chargers at Corning. Were they at least all functional to some degree? They were not all online when I was there last. They really need to keep up on maintenance at sites that are heavily capacity constrained.
Those two temp chargers do appear to be urban ones but in some cases that is better than being paired with another car that is sucking more than 72kW.
I don’t really get why they did the urban charger thing? Are the units somehow cheaper since they don’t have to switch rectifier modules between the two cars? Or the cables to the cars are cheaper since they are thinner? Or because they don’t want folks charging all the time at the max speeds in urban environments (weekly), so it is a way to reduce wear on folks batteries?
For areas that are constantly busy, it turns what would otherwise be a crap shoot on how long your charging session is going to take into a chunk of time that can be much more reliably scheduled. For through travel, this would be nice but isn't really a big deal. However, for the people Urban Superchargers were designed for, i.e. those without home/work charging who are relying on public chargers for their power needs, it's a big benefit.
For Tesla, they probably are cheaper too.
e-FTW
New electron smell
Redding would be helpful for Lassen trips, although we did have a fine trip without it. Granted, we had one day where we did not use the car at all up there and hiked from the campground. So Corning worked for us, but did not leave us a lot of margin for a multi-day stay.
Actually a small charger in one of the small towns on the 44 would be arguably better. Just like Groveland CA for Yosemite.
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