Supercharger - Firebaugh, CA (I-5 / West Panoche Rd, LIVE 13 Nov 2020, 56 V3 stalls)

[smartypnz]

I agree that this will ease some of the 'holiday/weekend' traveling north/south folks. Along with the recent addition of Paso Robles, the crunch should be temporarily eased. But as more of these infernal electric cars keep getting sold at record pace - well, you know.

Yes, most people have their own preferred way of getting to their destination (north/south in this section of Calif). US 101: the shortest major link SF to LA and I-5: the alternative route - not the shortest (but doesn't mean necessarily not the quickest).

Oh, there are variations, combinations of the two based mostly on specific origin and destination. Some cut across locations to the other route. Sometimes sudden changes of route due to conditions (traffic and weather).

Trying to plan the perfect SpC development must be a major task. Placing resources in a location that only helps 2-3 times a year is a big decision.

But, I like these pop up surprises. I would keep an eye out for another surprise of this sort popping up on the US 101 route.

 

[Speight]

I agree that this will ease some of the 'holiday/weekend' traveling north/south folks. Yes, most people have their own preferred way of getting to their destination (north/south in this section of Calif). US 101: the shortest major link SF to LA and I-5: the alternative route - not the shortest (but doesn't mean necessarily not the quickest).

US 101 is not very short, it's a pretty indirect route. I-580 to I-5 is a substantially shorter distance SF-LA than US 101. According to Google Maps, it's 382 miles vs 432 (420 if you shortcut through the San Marcos Pass on CA 154). Cutting over to I-5 at some points in the middle is shorter; SF-LA is 386 miles if you cross over at Gilroy via CA 152 and 408 miles if crossing over at Paso Robles on CA 46).

 

[WimW]

This is not completely correct (1 MW per 4 stalls). While each vehicle can take a maximum of 250kW, in aggregate, a V3 site without batteries can only draw an average of about 79kW per stall. Each V3 cabinet that serves 4 stalls can only draw 350kVA from the grid. The cabinets can be interconnected to share power on a DC bus with a maximum of 575kW into a cabinet. At best, a 12 stall site with 4 empty cars all connected to the same cabinet with the rest of the stalls empty would be limited to about 890kW = 222.5kW per car. If 12 empty cars all showed up at the same time to the 12 stall site, they would be limited to about 79kW. In reality, the charge taper of vehicles randomly arriving and departing will make this pretty much a non-issue. While batteries on the DC bus could theoretically increase the burst speed of the SC V3 system, I've not seen evidence that any public site is installed to do this. For example, the Santa Rosa V3 site uses normal Powerpacks and Tesla inverter. So, it probably only interconnects at the AC distribution level and it probably won't increase the burst charging speed. It probably only reduces the utility demand charges and smooths out the grid draw of the site.

Firebaugh will definitely increase the travel capacity of the I-5 corridor and it nicely fills a gap between Gustine and Harris Ranch. However, it will also likely move the corridor choke point further south to the Stockdale Hwy / Buttonwillow / Tejon Ranch area. That cluster has a combined 44 stalls.

Thanks for setting me straight! Though I think your 79 kW/stall is a bit pessimistic - power factor is almost certainly very close to 100% (>99%), 87 kW / stall without batteries or power sharing I guess the question is how many PowerPacks are they also installing to help support the install here for peak loads and peak shaving. ~5 MW continuous for Firebaugh as a site with 56 stalls / 14 SCv3 cabinets. Are 5000 kVA transformers a "common" size?

Is the 350 kVA per cabinet just limited by the cabinet or by other factors?
That kind of undermines the whole "V3 superchargers don't have stall pairing", since you might be limited by the cabinet after all?
It seems odd to me that you'd limit a 56 stall site by "just" a 5000 kVA transformer.

 

[ItsNotAboutTheMoney]

It was everywhere including Kettleman City. There is a pic of the line here, and it says it was about 50 cars long More Teslas on the Road Meant Hours-Long Supercharger Lines Over Thanksgiving

And yeah it was even worse along 101, I remember reading about 4+ hour waits at the Madonna Inn charger.

As I recall, people reported that although there was a line at Kettleman City, it moved pretty quickly. Others reported that Harris Ranch was OK, it's just that people targeted Kettleman City because it has a lot of stalls and doesn't stink.

The problem was US-101 with the large gap between San Luis Obispo and Salinas, with known slow charging at Atascadero, meaning San Luis Obispo got absolutely hammered.

I expect that the extra 28 stalls at Paso de Robles will make a _huge_ difference to charging along that stretch. But, it would also help to get Greenfield done.

 

[mociaf9]

Is the 350 kVA per cabinet just limited by the cabinet or by other factors?
That kind of undermines the whole "V3 superchargers don't have stall pairing", since you might be limited by the cabinet after all?

The 350 kVA is the cabinet's rating for input power from the grid. But V3 cabinets are also interconnected via a DC bus and are able to share power between each other or any connected battery system, with up to 575 kW able to be taken on as DC. So, it pretty much will never matter which stall you plug into. If the hardware is working properly, you should get the maximum available power. The statement about "no stall pairing" is therefore totally true in so far as they don't have strict pairing like the V2 superchargers did. But there are still limits on what the hardware can do and the belief that a single V3 cabinet on its own could simultaneously serve 4 connected cars at 250 kW each was always a mistaken one.

 

[ecarfan]

This area is known for mis-located names of SpC locations... see Holister and even nearby Gustine. Try going to those two towns and asking for walking directions to the Tesla Supercharger. Firebaugh wins the 'longest distance from town' award. But not by much.

It seems as good a name as any since the actual location has no clear identity as a “place”. But at this point we cannot be certain what Tesla will name the Supercharger in the car nav. Yes, currently on the Tesla website “Find Us” page it is labeled as “Firebaugh” but that could change.

My suggestion would be to call it “West Panoche” (to avoid confusion with any existing municipality) but it’s not really that important what it is called since the car nav will get you there.

 

[Webeevdrivers]

One guy was mentioning that it is about 25 miles each way out of the way off I5. Looking at google I’m not sure it would be that if using 33. What kind of highway is 33. Is it really that far off the beaten track?

 

[MarcoRP]

One guy was mentioning that it is about 25 miles each way out of the way off I5. Looking at google I’m not sure it would be that if using 33. What kind of highway is 33. Is it really that far off the beaten track?

This has already been talked about so many times. Please look in previous pages because I am so fed up of this discussion.

 

[Webeevdrivers]

This has already been talked about so many times. Please look in previous pages because I am so fed up of this discussion.

Found it. Thanks.

 

[mociaf9]

One guy was mentioning that it is about 25 miles each way out of the way off I5.

Right numbers, wrong units. It's about 25 METERS each way off of I-5 (NB--I've accurately and intentionally not included a kilo- prefix).

 

[Pluto]

It seems pretty clear from the images that this location is not going to have pull through charging spots... Maybe for a Cybertruck owner after being frustrated with unhooking their trailer repeatedly to charge, they could make their own plow through charging spot here lol. Also it appears they don't have all the supercharger cabinets in (I make out pipes coming up from the ground next to a group of six cabinets).

This has already been talked about so many times. Please look in previous pages because I am so fed up of this discussion.

Most likely we're going to need to re-explain it once or twice per discussion page on here... Get used to it now because it's probably not going to change lol, unless the title is edited to say I-5 or something. I don't think the address being listed in the title is helping much unfortunately.

 

[Webeevdrivers]

It seems pretty clear from the images that this location is not going to have pull through charging spots... Maybe for a Cybertruck owner after being frustrated with unhooking their trailer repeatedly to charge, they could make their own plow through charging spot here lol. Also it appears they don't have all the supercharger cabinets in (I make out pipes coming up from the ground next to a group of six cabinets).

Most likely we're going to need to re-explain it once or twice per discussion page on here... Get used to it now because it's probably not going to change lol, unless the title is edited to say I-5 or something. I don't think the address being listed in the title is helping much unfortunately.

Yah I'm guilty. Once I googled the address it made sense. I just didn't have time to read the whole thread. Agree, if the title was changed to something like "New Supercharger on i5 close top Firebaugh exit" or whatever.

Cheers.

 

[dhanson865]

I'm curious to know how they're going to handle how the navigation displays all these stalls. 50+ is going to be a REALLY WIDE line of red and gray blocks

I'm hoping it'll consolidate like

* x33 in use
* x17 available
* x2 inoperable

or some such.

 

[tivoboy]

I think it was last Thanksgiving when all those chargers had lines for hours. So it definitely can and does happen. Will be even worse now that they're putting out MY at breakneck pace.

This 50+ location is very welcome!

last christmas in southern california was the nightmare scenario. Weather shutting down I5, lots of people stranded, It was 4-8 hours at some SC south of San Francisco all the way to San Diego.

 

[Cheburashka]

last christmas in southern california was the nightmare scenario. Weather shutting down I5, lots of people stranded, It was 4-8 hours at some SC south of San Francisco all the way to San Diego.

Oh yeah, I forgot about that, I actually went to Palm Springs around that time. I remember the Grapevine was closed at some point and it turned it a cluster...

50+ spot charger will be very, very welcome along this route. They need to add one to 101 as well.

They are selling a lot of cars but I don't think the pace of Supercharger growth is keeping up. I think Coronavirus has saved us all (and Telsa) from overcrowded chargers and long lines because people are driving much less now. Happy to see that Tesla is using this time to beef up the infrastructure.

 

[miimura]

They should really put another 56 stall site near the Tejon Outlets on the other side of the freeway from the existing Tejon Ranch site. There is plenty of empty land there similar to the Panoche Road site.

 

[smartypnz]

50+ spot charger will be very, very welcome along this route. They need to add one to 101 as well.

Yeah first thing I thought of was Paso Robles as a candidate for expansion ... but more I think of it - the upcoming Greenfield would be a great location. A town that can use that kind of attention - in the sorta halfway point - plenty of space around to build bigger than currently planned. And.... the name would actually be at the town the charger is located.

(Really, I am sure it's not as easy as I'm making it sound, but Tesla has been known to do remarkable unexpected things.)

 

[ucmndd]

They should really put another 56 stall site near the Tejon Outlets on the other side of the freeway from the existing Tejon Ranch site. There is plenty of empty land there similar to the Panoche Road site.

Would be nice to switch it up a bit and try some different restaurants.

 

[PLUS EV]

Google doesn't give you random directions (as much as I hate Google for tracking people) if you ask for directions to a town you will get directions to city hall.

I tried it with my current city and hometown and went 0 for 2. So "not always true" at best.

 

[PLUS EV]

This has already been talked about so many times. Please look in previous pages because I am so fed up of this discussion.

LOL man. I just read through this thread for the first time all at once. Excruciating.