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Supercharger Locations UK
- Thread starter jontracey
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- Ireland United Kingdom
PV4EV
Member
I doubt there will be more than half a dozen Supercharger locations in the UK and certainly not at all 100+ Welcome Breaks.
Well, South Mimms seems to be only 2-bay (single cabinet), which I view as a mixed blessing: on the one hand as you say lots of 2-bay gives more coverage than half the number of 4-bay, but on the other hand it gives a reliability concern.
The superchargers seem to have a much better reputation for reliability than CHAdeMO (or indeed some of the slow charge networks), but I suspect a large portion of this is because of the redundant hardware.
There have been very few reports on TMC of "Supercharger down, I got stranded", but a fair number of "Couple of bays down, had to wait a bit but no big deal". With only a single cabinet, the risk is much higher. Still, at least at South Mimms you've got the Ecotricity chargers to fall back on.
The guys at Transport Evolved have a spy shot of two units under construction:
SpyShots: Teslas First UK Model S Supercharger Site
there is a 2nd cabinet at south mimms on the left although it seems to only serve one bay, so three total
By 'cabinet', I mean the electronics cabinet which feeds two "stalls" or "pedestals" where you plug in the car. The picture above shows only two stalls - one with the pedestal at the rear left of the leftmost parking space for a car parked nose-in (charging port on the nearside rear of the car), and one for a car parked tail-in (pedestal in the right-hand corner of the parking space, to mate with the nearside rear corner of the car when backed in).
There's more EV parking spaces adjacent, but they are for the existing Ecotricity points (two type-2 and one CHAdeMO).
Best I could tell trying to trace the conduit in the dark, there is only space for one electronics cabinet (ie. sufficient for the two stalls and no more).
So never having seen a super charger in real life, does one charger (the things under covers) only do one car ?
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View attachment 48803 Dont worry just answered my own question, 4 chargers 4 bays
Bjørns Tesla Model S #2: 375 km/233 mi on a single charge in Norwegian winter - YouTube
dirkhh
Middle-aged Member
On my phone so I can't add the link here, but search for "supercharger Erlang" to find Cottonwood's post on queuing theory and the logic on why many small sites might actually be worse.
Yes - the cable is big and stiff so can only reach a short distance from the pedestal - hence the positioning and the need to park nose-in or tail-in respectively. In the South Mimms picture above, if space #2 is ICEd, you might possibly still be able to charge if you parked sideways-on across spaces #3 and #4 to get your charge port into that corner.
The configuration of the first space configured for nose-in and the rest of the spaces configured for tail-in seems quite common at the USA supercharger sites, though I don't think I've seen a convincing explanation as to why.
PV4EV
Member
I quite often call in at Welcome Breaks to see if the EV spots are ICE'd just for the hell of it, even if I don't need to charge. These are typically locations on the M6, M40, M1, M25. I'd say that 25% of the time there is some ICE car blindly parked up in EV spot. Although I've yet to see the South Mimms one wrongly occupied.
Recently, at the Warwick / M40 southbound services, a Leaf was in one bay charging and the second was occupied by a rusting beat-up MPV covered with stick-on flowers and loaded to the roof with baby gear, so I parked elsewhere.
I walked past the MPV on the way in and noticed a few kids inside but got angrily glared at by a new-age-traveller type mother very obviously breast feeding a youngster on the front seat, even though she was in full view of the restaurant just 15ft in front of her .. !
Interesting what you say about police cars using the spots. I've seen that more than once.
The Tesla-branded cabinets you see next to each parking space, with the oval hole in them, are just cradles for the charging cables. The actual "charger" that converts AC to DC (which uses 12 of the same 10/11kW chargers that fitted in the cars, plus some control electronics and a load of cooling) is in an unbranded cabinet somewhere else nearby.
Generally each 120kW cabinet feeds two of the cable holders, which are labelled 1A, 1B, 2A, 2B etc. So if you pull into bay 1B while 1A is already in use then you may only get 60kW. The pair of charging points at South Mimms will probably be connected to a single cabinet, which means that if it fails they will both be offline.
Being next to a Type 2 charger (and, once Tesla get their adaptor sorted, a CHAdeMO) is a good safety net though.
Generally each 120kW cabinet feeds two of the cable holders, which are labelled 1A, 1B, 2A, 2B etc. So if you pull into bay 1B while 1A is already in use then you may only get 60kW. The pair of charging points at South Mimms will probably be connected to a single cabinet, which means that if it fails they will both be offline.
Being next to a Type 2 charger (and, once Tesla get their adaptor sorted, a CHAdeMO) is a good safety net though.
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