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Supercharger - Temecula, CA (Winchester Rd., LIVE 10 May 2016, 10 V2 stalls)

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How is this place on a Saturday afternoon. I'm going to be passing by, and will need to charge somewhere off of the 5 or 15 headed to SD
It's a pain to access the Temecula Supercharger on a weekend afternoon. It's at the Promenade Mall, and if that's not bad enough, they're located on the 3rd level of the parking structure. Typically there's plenty of open parking spots on the 4th or 5th levels, but drivers entering this parking structure wait for people loading into their cars on the 1st and 2nd levels, and it backs everything up slowing you from getting to the 3rd level.

You also run the risk of all 10 stalls being filled on a weekend afternoon.

Hitting this SC at 7am any day of the week is a piece of cake - easy in and easy out - but then again the mall is not open at this time.

Check out the Lake Elsinore Outlet SC's. I believe there are 20 stalls, and I've never seen them filled. And it's an easy off and on to the I-15.
 
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It should be fine. There is also another brand new SC along the 15 further south that is live, but might not yet be in the Nav. Check out supercharge.info for the location.

This SC went live on Friday and was showing in the Nav by Saturday. It's about 40 miles south of Temecula in the Rancho Bernardo / Carmel Mountain / 4S Ranch area. It's 3 to 4 miles west of I-15 though.

edlin303 posted a Nav screenshot of this location name / description - San Diego, CA - Camino Del Sur
Not only is it showing up, it’s up to 7 in use. I was optimistic to have this available in a pinch, but now I wonder just how overrun this location will be.
 
Map says these are now 150kW chargers; so I can charge my LR RWD at 150kW?
Yes, you could get close to 150 kW if.......
  1. You are on a firmware which supports the higher charging rate (I believe 2019.8.3 or later).
  2. You have an unpaired supercharger stall.
  3. You arrive with a low enough state of charge to get full power (i.e. low battery %).
  4. Your battery is warm enough (potentially helped by software-commanded battery preheating when navigating to the charger).
  5. The supercharger hardware is in perfect working order.
 
Yes, you could get close to 150 kW if.......
  1. You are on a firmware which supports the higher charging rate (I believe 2019.8.3 or later).
  2. You have an unpaired supercharger stall.
  3. You arrive with a low enough state of charge to get full power (i.e. low battery %).
  4. Your battery is warm enough (potentially helped by software-commanded battery preheating when navigating to the charger).
  5. The supercharger hardware is in perfect working order.


Wow, ok so not high probability. I expect to swing by on my way home to o'side now and again. Thanks for the info.
 
Not too shabby yesterday. I only stayed ten minutes and got about 50 miles of range added.
EA9C7273-E201-4ECA-BF78-0909601DA629.jpeg
 
Map says these are now 150kW chargers; so I can charge my LR RWD at 150kW?

I took the last stall yesterday with my LR RWD with 100 miles left on the battery. It was painfully slow at 34kW with all stalls Charging. Stuck at 34kW for 10 mins Eventually it ramped up to 70kW. I got tired of waiting and left after + 40 miles. I was showing my car to a friend in Temecula. Granted I've only had my car for a month but I've been to a 10 superchargers and have supercharged about 20 times, I've never seen it that slow.

Later on the drive home I went to Lake Elsinore. Only 1 other car there. It was at 120kW. Added 80 mi in 10 mins and left.

Temecula Charger
 

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I took the last stall yesterday with my LR RWD with 100 miles left on the battery. It was painfully slow at 34kW with all stalls Charging. Stuck at 34kW for 10 mins Eventually it ramped up to 70kW. I got tired of waiting and left after + 40 miles. I was showing my car to a friend in Temecula. Granted I've only had my car for a month but I've been to a 10 superchargers and have supercharged about 20 times, I've never seen it that slow.

Later on the drive home I went to Lake Elsinore. Only 1 other car there. It was at 120kW. Added 80 mi in 10 mins and left.

Temecula Charger
That was a nearly perfect example of exactly how a supercharger is supposed to work. Traditional style, V2 (i.e. 120 or 150 kW) superchargers share their available power between 2 stalls. This is the reason why the stalls are numbered 1A, 1B, 2A, 2B, ... instead of just 1, 2, 3, 4, ... When only 1 car is plugged into a pair of stalls they will have "access" to the full power available from the supercharger cabinet, i.e. 120 or 150 kW. When 2 cars are charging from a pair of stalls, that available power needs to be split so that both can charge simultaneously. But they don't split the power evenly. They divide it in a to minimize the disadvantaging of the first car to plug into the pair. So, if you were already charging and someone else came along and plugged into your stall's pair, the effect on your charge rate is minimized.

Plugging in second to a pair where the first car is charging at the max rate will get you access to ~36 kW. Assuming the supercharger is in full working order, that is the minimum limit when plugging in which ensures you're still getting something. When you plugged in, that first car will go from a maximum limit of 120 or 150 kW, depending on location, down to ~108 kW. Then the power will be transferred dynamically to the second stall in ~36 kW blocks as soon as the first car tapers enough to not need a block anymore. So, once the first car's charging dropped below 72kW due to normal charging taper, a second block of 36kW became available to the second car and the second car's new limit is raised to 72 kW, etc.

This dynamic power sharing behavior is only for the traditional style V2 stations. Urban style superchargers get a set 72 kW max per charging post and don't dynamically shift power. And while V3 superchargers cabinets are serving 4 stalls instead of 2, they supposedly don't split the power.
 
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I think I've been lucky all the times I've had to split the power between two stalls and I've done it many times. I've never dropped below 60 or 70 kW. My luck ran out as that hungry X next to me was gobbling it up in Temecula. With the frequency of SCs along the I-15 between San Diego to Vegas, I typically just move on to the next Charger if there is a line.

I hit up 2 more chargers in the last day. Solid 120 kW at a 150 kW station and a 70 kW at an urban Charger. I hope I'm not degrading my battery for Supercharging so much. I'm averaging one session every 1.3 days or so, though usually i'm at a low 100 mile range out of 325 when I do so, but usually no more than 40-80 miles. 40 miles is usually typical for me. This is on top of the Level 2 charging I do at work at about 50-70 miles a day charging.
 
hat was a nearly perfect example of exactly how a supercharger is supposed to work. Traditional style, V2 (i.e. 120 or 150 kW) superchargers share their available power between 2 stalls. This is the reason why the stalls are numbered 1A, 1B, 2A, 2B, ... instead of just 1, 2, 3, 4, ... When only 1 car is plugged into a pair of stalls they will have "access" to the full power available from the supercharger cabinet, i.e. 120 or 150 kW. When 2 cars are charging from a pair of stalls, that available power needs to be split so that both can charge simultaneously. But they don't split the power evenly. They divide it in a to minimize the disadvantaging of the first car to plug into the pair. So, if you were already charging and someone else came along and plugged into your stall's pair, the effect on your charge rate is minimized.

Yes, I agree with your analysis in principle. But my nagging question is that I have experienced much lower charging rates at Superchargers when I arrived with a low SOC.

For example, yesterday I arrived at a Supercharger with 8%. I shared a stall as the entire facility was booked. I plugged in and received 22kW. The rate never exceeded 22kW. At times it would plummet to 10-13kW before ramping up to 20-22. After 20 minutes (surely long enough for the Model 3 that was sharing the pair to have tapered down a tad) I unplugged at 18%.

So, what does air temperature do with this phenomenon? It was 102 degrees in the shade, so likely closer to 115 in direct sunlight.

How does continual use effect this phenomenon? When I departed someone else took my place. Are the wires too hot from resistance and air temperatures so that the charge rate is throttled to prevent damage?

Our electric utility is the dread PG&E. They have programs for residential customers to curtail their AC usage by the use of "smart thermostats." In order to maintain adequate electricity supply, they cut the compressor and only run the fan 20 minutes out of each hour. There are up to 20 days each summer when PG&E invokes this jury-rigged solution to reduce brown or black outs throughout their territory. Yesterday was one of those days. Could it be that Tesla (even though a commercial customer) has voluntarily signed up for this program on its Superchargers so that the utility delivers less power to the Superchargers in exchange for lowered demand fees or some other financial consideration? Ten stalls delivering ~25kW each versus ten stalls delivering ~72kW each is quite a saving on the grid.

I have experienced much lower charging rates throughout the Western US during the hot summers even though there are no other explanations like sharing a stall or a high SOC upon plugging in!
 
For example, yesterday I arrived at a Supercharger with 8%. I shared a stall as the entire facility was booked. I plugged in and received 22kW. The rate never exceeded 22kW. At times it would plummet to 10-13kW before ramping up to 20-22. After 20 minutes (surely long enough for the Model 3 that was sharing the pair to have tapered down a tad) I unplugged at 18%.
If you recall/understand that each supercharger cabinet contains 12 distinct chargers (the same that are in the cars themselves) that are combined in 4 blocks of 3 chargers each (3 x 4 = 12), this behavior is thoroughly understandable. Each of those chargers is capable of 12 kW. So at the start of your session, the other car kept 3 blocks of chargers and you were given a single block of 3 and should therefore have had access to a rate of up to 36 kW. However, one of the chargers in that block was non-functional, thereby reducing your max rate to 24 kW. In addition, one of the remaining two chargers was operating poorly. When it didn't work your max rate would temporarily drop down to 12 kW--the rate supplied by a single charger--when it started working again, the rate would ramp back up to 24 kW.

As for why your rate never increased after a long enough time that you would expect the other car to have begun tapering, I don't know. Given that there were clearly issues with 2 of the 3 chargers in your single block, I don't think it's that unreasonable to consider the possibility that there were also non-functional or problematic chargers within the 3 blocks the other person was using. So, maybe they weren't getting very close to the expected 108 kW. If they started with a low SoC, hadn't preceded you in plugging in, and were only getting less than 90 kW, then it's still quite possible that they hadn't tapered enough to trigger a transfer of an additional block of chargers to your stall within that time period. Or maybe the cabinet was having problems with switching the power between stalls and this resulted in a delay. Who knows.

In general, whenever you see problems or changes to charging rates that occur in multiples of 11 or 12 kW, my baseline assumption would be that it's to do with the supercharger cabinet hardware (i.e. chargers). Not electrical grid issues. How sensitive that cabinet hardware is to high ambient temperatures, I don't know. I seem to recall that some people used to report having temperature related issues that were thought to be related to the charging plugs/cables. They could get a better charging rate or fewer interruptions if they draped a wet or cold towel over the handle when plugged in.
 
If you recall/understand that each supercharger cabinet contains 12 distinct chargers (the same that are in the cars themselves) that are combined in 4 blocks of 3 chargers each (3 x 4 = 12), this behavior is thoroughly understandable. Each of those chargers is capable of 12 kW. So at the start of your session, the other car kept 3 blocks of chargers and you were given a single block of 3 and should therefore have had access to a rate of up to 36 kW. However, one of the chargers in that block was non-functional, thereby reducing your max rate to 24 kW. In addition, one of the remaining two chargers was operating poorly. When it didn't work your max rate would temporarily drop down to 12 kW--the rate supplied by a single charger--when it started working again, the rate would ramp back up to 24 kW.

As for why your rate never increased after a long enough time that you would expect the other car to have begun tapering, I don't know. Given that there were clearly issues with 2 of the 3 chargers in your single block, I don't think it's that unreasonable to consider the possibility that there were also non-functional or problematic chargers within the 3 blocks the other person was using. So, maybe they weren't getting very close to the expected 108 kW. If they started with a low SoC, hadn't preceded you in plugging in, and were only getting less than 90 kW, then it's still quite possible that they hadn't tapered enough to trigger a transfer of an additional block of chargers to your stall within that time period. Or maybe the cabinet was having problems with switching the power between stalls and this resulted in a delay. Who knows.

In general, whenever you see problems or changes to charging rates that occur in multiples of 11 or 12 kW, my baseline assumption would be that it's to do with the supercharger cabinet hardware (i.e. chargers). Not electrical grid issues. How sensitive that cabinet hardware is to high ambient temperatures, I don't know. I seem to recall that some people used to report having temperature related issues that were thought to be related to the charging plugs/cables. They could get a better charging rate or fewer interruptions if they draped a wet or cold towel over the handle when plugged in.

Thank you for that explanation! (This is not the first time I have experienced poor charging rates with high temperatures. But usually the rates were ~48kW, maybe ~60 even with a low battery and an unpaired stall.)

Accordingly, is it correct to infer that these chargers frequently crap out and need replacing, especially at popular locations? And since an unpaired stall might deliver 2/3 the full rate if four out of the twelve are problematic, that is "good enough" in Tesla's thinking and cost saving mentality.

It is these "known unknowns' (to coin a phrase :cool:) that I believe vexes us owners and clogs the phone lines and service centers with our ignorance of the Supercharger protocols. It would be beneficial to us owners if a vague but reassuring message could pop up on the touchscreen that would advise us (a) our cars are fine and (b) there are technical issues with these stalls that are reducing available power to the stalls. I am not sure how much Tesla would care to divulge, but something is better than nothing.
 
I only use this SC when I absolutely have to, it's been a hassle every time I've tried it (of course, it's always in the evening on a drive back to SD). You would think a thriving community like Temecula would justify having a more typical supercharger installation, instead of one tucked away on the 3rd floor of a parking garage. The Elsinore SC is a great alternative, but most of my trips end up being down the 215, which means the Elsinore SC requires a really inconvenient detour.
 
I only use this SC when I absolutely have to, it's been a hassle every time I've tried it (of course, it's always in the evening on a drive back to SD). You would think a thriving community like Temecula would justify having a more typical supercharger installation, instead of one tucked away on the 3rd floor of a parking garage. The Elsinore SC is a great alternative, but most of my trips end up being down the 215, which means the Elsinore SC requires a really inconvenient detour.
What about the new Menifee charger, that's right off the 215...