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Supercharger - Los Altos, CA (LIVE 7 Aug 2020, 16 urban stalls)

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M

MarcoRP

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Per a report on the Supercharge Info forum, there is a 16 stall 72kW Supercharger under construction in the Whole Foods parking lot in Los Altos. Here is the post: view here, @Tomfool

Was at the Whole Foods at 4800 El Camino Real, Los Altos, CA 94022, and saw some construction fencing next to the entrance, electrical work in progress, and spoke to a couple of electricians one was wearing a tesla logo construction vest.
2nd level underground parking is getting 16@ 72 kw chargers in addition to the existing Ccs/chademo chargers in the first level.
While there are 2 large greens transformers at the site now, neither is for the new supercharger site.

No photos were provided, so we have no way to know if this is an official location. Can any locals take a ride around here to check? Thanks.

Marco
 
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This is one of several Whole Foods that I frequent. I stop in about 5 different ones as none are really "close" to where I live.

This Whole Foods has underground parking and for some reason the entry/exit ramp is often a bear if the place is crowded.

I will be in the area today and try to drop by and see.

I'm not sure it makes a great supercharging spot, just because the exit ramp is crowded, but I guess one or two more cars won't make that much of a difference.

The bottom floor of the garage is not used that much. People fight for the 20 spots in the front, then the 1st level.
 
As promised, photos of what appears to be around 12 chargers on the 2nd floor (underground) along the far wall furtherest from the car entry/exit ramp. Mid day about 1/2 full in what I suspect is employee parking. Above ground looks like where the transformers are (didn't have time to peek behind the green fence.

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Huh. I was just there last night, and was looking at the EVgo stations. They are equipped with Tesla CHAdeMO adapters. (Same setup as the EVgo chargers by the Lucky store on Foothill Expressway.)

I sometimes wonder if Tesla monitors the fleet for CHAdeMO charging to see where they need to add more Superchargers...
 
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The supercharger map shows 2 new sites near each other. One in Los Altos (near San Antonio) and one in Mountain View (near Castro and El Camino). This one is in between. Does anyone know if the other 2 sites are coming? Is 72kW correct for this site? It's a little disappointing - I though Tesla was adding 250kW predominantly.
 
The supercharger map shows 2 new sites near each other. One in Los Altos (near San Antonio) and one in Mountain View (near Castro and El Camino). This one is in between. Does anyone know if the other 2 sites are coming? Is 72kW correct for this site? It's a little disappointing - I though Tesla was adding 250kW predominantly.
Tesla's map doesn't show exact locations for future superchargers (grey pins), just which cities or general areas they are going to build in. The pins go on the location that Google Maps pinpoints as the city/town/neighborhood that Tesla says the supercharger will go. So, in this case, wherever Google puts the pin for "Los Altos" that's where the grey pin for this supercharger is displayed. That just happens to be near San Antonio, but it doesn't mean anything else. Same for the Mountain View pin. It just means that Tesla plans to build a supercharger somewhere in MV, or maybe that they are planning on expanding the existing MV supercharger.

Yes, 72 kW is correct for this site. It's an urban supercharger. When they debuted the V3 superchargers, Tesla said that they'd eventually get to the point where they were only installing V3 AND urban superchargers.
 
Tesla's map doesn't show exact locations for future superchargers (grey pins), just which cities or general areas they are going to build in. The pins go on the location that Google Maps pinpoints as the city/town/neighborhood that Tesla says the supercharger will go. So, in this case, wherever Google puts the pin for "Los Altos" that's where the grey pin for this supercharger is displayed. That just happens to be near San Antonio, but it doesn't mean anything else. Same for the Mountain View pin. It just means that Tesla plans to build a supercharger somewhere in MV, or maybe that they are planning on expanding the existing MV supercharger.

Yes, 72 kW is correct for this site. It's an urban supercharger. When they debuted the V3 superchargers, Tesla said that they'd eventually get to the point where they were only installing V3 AND urban superchargers.

Thanks. It's good to have more Teals chargers even if 73kW. Do u know if they share power in pairs or are stand-alone? I am wondering if that garage location is open 24/7?
 
I visited the site today. The stalls are along the west wall of the parking garage, Level 2. The transformer is at the opposite side of the property on the east side by the parking ramp down from the street. There are 6 large conduits running the entire length of the parking garage, east to west, right down the middle. The conduits go into large wall mounted junction boxes and split left and right. I can confirm that there are 16 Urban Supercharger pedestals, 14 along the West wall and 2 along the North wall between the NW corner and the elevator. Evidently, the Supercharger cabinets will be spread out behind the stalls and mounted on pre-fab raised platforms. You can see one of the platforms on the right of the picture below, which primarily shows the conduits coming down from the ceiling into the junction boxes. It is unclear how they will connect the pedestals to the Supercharger cabinets. Other installations have used a simple round conduit between the brown box conduit and the pedestal base. I am also a little puzzled by the 6 conduits feeding L1/L2/L3/N/G to 8 Supercharger cabinets.

Los Altos Supercharger Construction 2020-02-04_14-25-52_047.jpg
 
The installation is moving along nicely. The underground work out front seems mostly complete along with the conduits into the garage to the Supercharger cabinets. Supercharger cabinets are also placed on their bases, but lots of wiring remains to be done. There is also no indication yet of how they will connect the pedestals to the cabinets.
Pictures taken on the afternoon of Feb 12.

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As indicated in the post above, the pedestals are now connected by overhead conduit to the charger cabinets. I can't tell how much wiring is complete inside the conduits. Photo taken Friday afternoon Feb 28.

Also, two buck-boost transformers have been installed where the upside-down garbage cans were covering conduits, as shown in the second picture in Post #12 above.

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I was there today and asked if their transformer had been hooked up yet. I have noticed that all the other sites under construction in the bay area are basically done except getting their transformer. I think they are tapping into the one that is feeding the EVGo station one floor up. The guy working on the site mentioned that they will just need a sign-off, and they will be done. I assume he means after the work they were doing today. Each of the stations had their covers off and there were many guys working on them. I took a cool picture of it with the Supercharge.info app, but since there is no cell service down there the upload must have failed and that image is lost in the ether. Lesson learned.
 
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