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Supercharger - Kettleman City, CA - Bernard Dr. (LIVE, 56 V3 stalls)
- Thread starter MarcoRP
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- California supercharger
israndy
Supercharger Hunter
I got to KC about 3 am and all was well, but the Supercharger was empty when I passed by at sunrise (I was sleeping and charging at the CCS down the road when I first got to KC).
Doug Martoccia
Member
Last night I was just a few minutes away from Kettleman City when the Nav notified me that it was down. After a bit of drama with my wife, we headed towards Harris Ranch (in a massive rainstorm) to eat dinner and charge there instead. My wife couldn't find a number to call to ask for an estimate, but from the looks of this thread, waiting it out would have been a terrible idea. My other option for charging was in Paso, but I was just a little bit shy of being able to make it. This really goes to show how helpful it is to have multiple geographically dispersed options!
Doug Martoccia
Member
I think the best you can do is to enter it as your destination in the Nav. A big red box that notified me that KC was out last night sometime between 5:30-5:45pm, I think. I have no idea what the lag time was for it to pop up.
That is the one good thing that the NEVI formula funding program is trying to do; put a fast charging site at least every 50 miles on the major highways. (Though I don't how large of any area these power cuts were impacting at a time.)
Mrbrock
Active Member
Probably a bad idea to travel in an electric car during a heat wave when power shutoffs are planned (especially in California). Fast charging will be the first thing shut off not only because of its impact on the grid, but the demand charges Tesla and other operators would face to supply that electricity. They would lose massive amounts of money so it may have been Tesla turning off to avoid those charges and "help" the grid. In the past, they pushed a message to cars registered in CA alerting of the upcoming power shutoffs and asking people to not charge during the day.
Considering all of the other businesses in the area were without power too it wasn't Tesla's choice.
Good news is what you’re concerned about is a bit of a rare and perfect storm. FWIW in 8 years supercharging up and down the 5 I've never come across a mis-statused charger.
Certainly where feasible its always a good idea to manage reserve so you can get to (or backtrack to) the closest charger. Good news there is that there's so many chargers on the 5 these days that its pretty easy.
Nuclear case is you get a flatbed to the closest supercharger, which should be free for most roadside plans. There's been instances in the past where Tesla has provided that kind of service to a few folks, but I suspect for something like a grid outage (And considering the number of folks that own Teslas these days) that's not going to fly.
those hot days plus CA grid problems, we decided to stay home and not gamble or stress of charging in the middle of no where. Thank you CA
Not sure why everyone is assuming rolling blackouts or “CA grid problems.” Other than small muni utilities, none of the investor owned utilities had CAISO- ordered rolling blackouts during those days. It could have been an overheated or overloaded transformer, a fault on the feeder, a car vs. pole, or any other issue common to electric distribution systems in any state that sees hot weather or otherwise.
israndy
Supercharger Hunter
Have a backup plan. Is it prudent to arrive at a Supercharger with 10% or less if that doesn't leave enough of a buffer to get you somewhere else in the event of an outage?
My long term back up plan: is allow 20% buffer to arrive any Supercharger charger in case like this scenario, black out or long wait. I will never wait.. just keep chugging along until you find that charge spot. That's CA Supercharging adventure.
Sounds like good advice and I'm sure this will be adopted as the proportion of EV drivers hit the road. Given my 2013 S85's longer Supercharging sessions, I usually try to arrive at a Supercharger site below 20% SOC since I usually spend no more than 40 minutes charging. One thing to keep in mind is that range efficiency declines about 8% per 5mph over 55mph. In other words, cutting down your speed from 80mph-70mph might get you enough range to skip a downed Supercharger site. In an emergency situation, there's no shame driving in the right lane with hazards on while getting passed by a few semis.
Now if this is going to be commonplace, I'll have to brush the dust off my old VW TDI since I can go over 700 miles at 80mph on a single tank of fuel. Fortunately for me, my wife and I stay local for just about every 3 day holiday weekends and we've never had to fly anywhere for Thanksgiving or Christmas. I have no desire to join in the scrum of popular traveling days.
The only roadtrip we take is down to SoCal visiting our daughter after the pandemic started. I love taking 101 and 1 but it's a bit longer though we usually stay overnight somewhere halfway with destination charging and sunset dinner by the beach. If we want to rush it then 5 has lots of plan B stops, I also have changed my habit of stopping only once for a long stop/charge for lunch, because I found out that the time is not that big a difference if we make 2 quick 10 min stops/charge for bathroom breaks and a 30 min lunch break/charge, but I always make sure I can go extra 30 miles forward or backward in case of SC malfunction, if you navigate to SC you will always know in advance.
israndy
Supercharger Hunter
Agreed, you almost don't have to think if you just use the built-in Nav. Tell it your destination and hit the road. I am usually happy with arriving with 7%, which in my car means 30 miles, but if I just get in and go the car will wait until there will be 12-15% remaining at the destination before suggesting it's time to continue the trip. The Tesla Plan B is: Go to the next Supercharger, and if we tell you to slow down, slow down.
I cannot imagine what it must be like for non-Tesla owners. Probably all different as each car has it's own charge maps (or no maps) and each network has their own reliability issues.
I cannot imagine what it must be like for non-Tesla owners. Probably all different as each car has it's own charge maps (or no maps) and each network has their own reliability issues.
Definitely. At a property we owned in Mountain House the power was from the irrigation district. The good thing was it was really cheap.
Mrbrock
Active Member
So 30 miles at 7% is miles to 0% plus miles after 0%? Otherwise reverse math puts you at 428 mile 100% range…
israndy
Supercharger Hunter
What? were you still editing that post?
30 miles at 7%, about 3+ miles a percent, I rounded up. I hear there is about 24 miles below zero on the TM3 LR RWD, but I have never tried it out, only went a couple miles below zero ever.
30 miles at 7%, about 3+ miles a percent, I rounded up. I hear there is about 24 miles below zero on the TM3 LR RWD, but I have never tried it out, only went a couple miles below zero ever.
I’ve done about maybe about 10 miles beyond “0”% on the 2018 TM3 LR RWD but 24 sounds like a lot. My wife was freaking out as I was hypermilling, drafting behind a truck, all systems were off, and not going over about 42 mph till we got to Kettleman during the 2019 (maybe it was 2018) I5 snowpocalypse of xmas 2019.
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