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Supercharger - Gilroy, CA (16 V2 stalls)

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Assuming that the constraint is charging power and/or supercharging hardware - the superchargers should be installed with more plugs( and parking spaces ) than charging units.
Software should maintain a queue and a switching system should route charging power to the plug that is next in line.

For example: if you have 4 90kW superchargers available you could put in 8 plugs.
8 cars are parked, all 8 are plugged in. 4 are charging with 90kW available to each. 4 are waiting. When one car finishes, its owner is notified and the other car starts charging.
No time is lost moving vehicles in and out of spots. No time is lost waiting for the owner of the car that finished charging to come and disconnect and move.
A 9th vehicle needs to be moved into position when notified that another car has vacated the charger, but will still be waiting in queue.

Ideally charging is divisible in increments, perhaps of 10kW and the supercharger power is routable to all plugs, just as long as it doesnt exceed 360kW.
So all 8 cars could be charging, some at the full 90kW, and some at some partial power.
If this is not technically possible, then perhaps a hybrid system where the 4 superchargers route their power to the 4 frontmost cars that need more than 10 or 20kW - and the other cars receive 10 or 20 kW of AC power.

So if you have 8 cars in queue and they all need a full charge, the first 4 cars would get to near full and then drop off supercharging when the charging current drops under 20kW, they would switch to AC charging ( receiving <= 20 kW ) and the next cars would receive supercharging.
If the total power limit is 360kW, the front 4 cars may be receiving 20kW each, and the next 3 cars would be receiving 90kW and the 8th car still waiting.

With this system it would be reasonable to have more than 2x as many plugs as superchargers.
The ratio of plugs to superchargers really depends on how much time is wasted waiting:
1 - for someone who is done to come and unplug their car
and 2 - for the tail end of the charging top up when power drops down to low levels ( 20kW or so )
 
I agree that 30A is sometimes either adequate, or all you can get, or just cheaper. I don't think all EVSEs should be 70A.

But I do think people that took DOE money to install EVSEs should have at least been *allowed* to install EVSEs over 30A if it made sense in certain locations. It can be far more useful, and if the power is available the price delta related to the entire install cost is very small. But the DOE contract specifically disallowed that. Nobody at the DOE would talk to me about why (although in other conversations they have said they didn't talk to owners before writing the contracts, and they should have because they might have done some things differently).

30A was largely a historical accident; the previous inductive and conductive (prior rev of J1772) were all on 40A circuits (30A running current). The DOE grant was to upgrade these chargers to the current J1772 standard, but would not cover rewiring.

Yeah, they should have been allowed. In Santa Cruz, California, the downtown garage charging station was originally wired with #2 copper. Installing 80A J1772 chargers would have only required swapping out the circuit breaker.
 
It is just a beginning.

Someone from Canada on this forum told a story... A guy in $40k car was driving on private property late in the night and siting in the car sucking couple dollars of electricity from j1772... He was spending freaking hour and a half sitting in a car daily! And got discovered by incident from checking security cameras.

You think Model S drivers are not that cheap? :confused::eek::cool:

But consider this, you only would need to spend 20 min in your $80k+ car at supercharger location to cover daily driving PLUS you "make" more then $2 :tongue::tongue::tongue:

Do not remember who posted but I really got shocked/amazed by that story...
 
I don't think 70amp is enough to make a qualitative difference. DC charging is where it's at and that's what needs to be built out.

While I agree that DC quick-charging is the future, especially for road trips, there is a big difference between a 30amp and a 70amp Level 2. QCs need to be along road trip routes, while 70 amp chargers at destinations can eliminate 45 minutes of cow smelling en-route - for those class of destinations within a single full charge, of course.
 
While I agree that DC quick-charging is the future, especially for road trips, there is a big difference between a 30amp and a 70amp Level 2. QCs need to be along road trip routes, while 70 amp chargers at destinations can eliminate 45 minutes of cow smelling en-route - for those class of destinations within a single full charge, of course.
Maybe it's just that New England is smaller and denser, but I'm struggling to think of situations where 30A/208v charging at my destination wouldn't be adequate. If I'm driving 160+ miles one way, I'm spending more than 6 hours at the destination, with few exceptions.
 
Well, I think this is already the case. Each Supercharger has two plugs with 90 kW max each, and a total max of (I think) 120 kW. So as one tapers out, the other one ramps up.

Great! Then they should add plugs. Unless the cost of a parking space exceeds the cost of the supercharger - the time lost when a car that is finished charging has not yet moved out of the way and shuffling cars into position is the weakest link.
 
+1 The entirety of your post. Getting the people and cars moved around is the weakest link; particularly where restaurants and coffee-shops factor into the equation.


Assuming that the constraint is charging power and/or supercharging hardware - the superchargers should be installed with more plugs( and parking spaces ) than charging units.
Software should maintain a queue and a switching system should route charging power to the plug that is next in line.

For example: if you have 4 90kW superchargers available you could put in 8 plugs.
8 cars are parked, all 8 are plugged in. 4 are charging with 90kW available to each. 4 are waiting. When one car finishes, its owner is notified and the other car starts charging.
No time is lost moving vehicles in and out of spots. No time is lost waiting for the owner of the car that finished charging to come and disconnect and move.
A 9th vehicle needs to be moved into position when notified that another car has vacated the charger, but will still be waiting in queue.

Ideally charging is divisible in increments, perhaps of 10kW and the supercharger power is routable to all plugs, just as long as it doesnt exceed 360kW.
So all 8 cars could be charging, some at the full 90kW, and some at some partial power.
If this is not technically possible, then perhaps a hybrid system where the 4 superchargers route their power to the 4 frontmost cars that need more than 10 or 20kW - and the other cars receive 10 or 20 kW of AC power.

So if you have 8 cars in queue and they all need a full charge, the first 4 cars would get to near full and then drop off supercharging when the charging current drops under 20kW, they would switch to AC charging ( receiving <= 20 kW ) and the next cars would receive supercharging.
If the total power limit is 360kW, the front 4 cars may be receiving 20kW each, and the next 3 cars would be receiving 90kW and the 8th car still waiting.

With this system it would be reasonable to have more than 2x as many plugs as superchargers.
The ratio of plugs to superchargers really depends on how much time is wasted waiting:
1 - for someone who is done to come and unplug their car
and 2 - for the tail end of the charging top up when power drops down to low levels ( 20kW or so )
 
But it's only a known vehicle type for the next couple years. Gen3 and the Roadster replacement will have shorter wheelbases than Model S/X. I guess we could make it like an airport terminals and have marks for each model painted on the ground that you could see from the rear-view camera.

+1!
This is the system I use when parking in my garage. I have a blue line painted at the point the door touches the concrete. With the fisheye backup camera, when I see the blue line on the bottom of the screen, I am roughly 3" inside my closed door space.

And someone thinking of parking there might also see "PARKING ONLY FOR" -- MODEL S AND X -- ROADSTER -- MODEL C on their respective lines, and maybe hesitate.

I also wonder if any sign such as "Caution: High Voltage. May cause ignition of nearby gasoline supplies" would be helpful. Hmmm. That would give me pause.

Or maybe "Caution: Parking here may cause severe irritation in owners of Tesla cars"
 
"Caution: High Voltage. May cause ignition of nearby gasoline supplies"

How about "Caution: High Voltage. May cause ignition of nearby gasoline vehicles." :)

I'm seriously jealous of these SuperChargers and the recent expansion. The one between Houston and Dallas should have at least 5 bays to start. Is Tesla worried that someone might come and steal one of the inactive ones and relocate it somewhere, perhaps Texas? I'm only asking for a friend.
 
At the annual shareholder meeting in June 2013, Elon Musk mentioned that the Gilroy Supercharger location is a very busy Supercharger location, as many people go there for charging their Tesla Model S.

Is there anybody who has more information about that?
 
There are 4 supercharger bays and they can all be used at once.

True- but the four bays share two stacks of chargers so only two of those four cars will get full power at any one time. The bays are labeled- 1A and 1B are the older style of bay and share the first stack of chargers while 2A and 2B are the newer style and share the second stack of chargers. The first car to pull into a stack of chargers gets full power and the second car gets what's left over.

I posted some photos here: Paso Robles road trip- our first multi-day EV experience
 
At the annual shareholder meeting in June 2013, Elon Musk mentioned that the Gilroy Supercharger location is a very busy Supercharger location, as many people go there for charging their Tesla Model S.

Is there anybody who has more information about that?

I'm sure others have visited the Gilroy chargers more often than I have, but I've made eight stops starting in early March up through a couple of weeks ago. All the bays were full at some point during five of the eight stops and I had to wait for a stall three times. At one point there was a total of eight cars there- four charging and four waiting. Someone else posted a video from that day, but I think there was only seven cars when he took the video: Full House at Gilroy May 11, 2013 - YouTube

I imagine usage is highest around 10 am to 6 pm on weekends, but all the spots were full at one point when I stopped on Friday a bit before noon. And one of the times I had to wait for a bay, all the other cars left soon after I started charging and then I had the place all to myself. Basically usage is a bit sporadic, but the place can definitely get jammed up during weekends.
 
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At the annual shareholder meeting in June 2013, Elon Musk mentioned that the Gilroy Supercharger location is a very busy Supercharger location, as many people go there for charging their Tesla Model S.

Is there anybody who has more information about that?

Well I was at the meeting, and left when it was over and headed south. In spite of Elon's warning when I arrived a Gilroy, I was the only one there. I needed about 30 minutes, and only one other car arrived while I was charging, and he was not from the shareholders meeting. The two times I have used Gilroy, I arrived as the only one there. I have seen pictures, however, with people waiting.
 
How many Tesla Model S's go to the Gilroy Supercharger per day/week/month to ...

It's particularly busy on the weekends. I think there's a few things going in:

- people shopping at the outlets
- people doing weekend trips
- on a path that some people commute to work

Hawthorne would be just as crowded if there were more interesting things around. But luckily there's nothing near the Hawthorne SC like there is at Gilroy.
 
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True- but the four bays share two stacks of chargers so only two of those four cars will get full power at any one time. The bays are labeled- 1A and 1B are the older style of bay and share the first stack of chargers while 2A and 2B are the newer style and share the second stack of chargers. The first car to pull into a stack of chargers gets full power and the second car gets what's left over.

So, actually only 2 cars can get full power at any one time.
While there are 4 charging spots.
Is that a wise decission?
I doubt it.
 
So, actually only 2 cars can get full power at any one time.
While there are 4 charging spots.
Is that a wise decission?
I doubt it.

Hmmm, I suspect a lot of thought went into the system and how it works best.
Usage data from the first year of supercharger use may lead to some adjustments.

However, I trust Tesla and their wealth of engineers more than I trust some person, myself included, on an Internet forum.
 
There are limits to the size of the transformers at various sites, and also something called "Demand Charges" from the utility (it's based on the highest power you draw in any 15 minute period, during the entire months bill), so they have reasons why they don't support 90KW or 120KW simultaneously at all of the charger bays.