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Supercharger - Tonopah, NV

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The minutes [PDF] from the Dec. 9 town board meeting have been posted. I'll say this for the board, they are cautious and try to look at all the angles.

They have been consistently less favorable toward the state's L2 charger, mostly because the town only gets a one-time grant for the L2 charger and then they have to maintain it, whereas Tesla maintains the Supercharger. However, they seem to be interested in going ahead with both and are trying to see if Tesla can leave room for the L2 charger on the same site as the Supercharger.

They say they've seen Tesla's plan for the site. Based on the description (running cable under St. Patrick St. from a pole off Oddie Road), it looks like they're sticking with the Pocket Park location in front of the firehouse. There was no more talk about relocating the SC or the park itself, but we know the SC plan wasn't actually approved until the next board meeting. On Dec. 9, they tabled it until Dec. 23 to talk to their liability insurance provider and make sure their rates wouldn't go up drastically, "especially if one of the vehicles catches fire on the property."

We'll see what the minutes from the Dec. 23 meeting say. In any case, construction is supposed to start sometime this month. The weather is not great right now but should be improving dramatically next week.
 
From the minutes of the town board meeting on Jan. 13: "Tesla is hopeful to be breaking ground by the end of February."

Meanwhile the state's Electric Highway L2 charger appears to be a no-go: "NV Energy could not come to a resolution."


Seriously? What was the difficulty for the L2 charger? Personally, I think they're borderline useless because they put out so little power. But they are relatively cheap and don't draw much power, so I'm puzzled as to why they couldn't "come to a resolution".
 
It had to do with the costs involved. NV Energy's deal is not nearly so generous as Tesla's. They're a small town with a tight budget, rightly worried that they don't have an accurate estimate of what the other chargers are going to cost them down the line.
 
I thought it was a dual standard CHAdeMO-CCS DCFC that was being put in for the Nevada Electric Highway. You would think that the electric highway project would have it worked out who would be paying for the electricity and what it was going to cost. Relying on site hosts to take risk on the electricity vs. customer charges is not a way to get the project done in a timely manner.
 
The minutes for the Tonopah town board meeting of 12/23/15 have finally been put up, and they show that the Tesla supercharger agreement was accepted on a 4-0 vote. The minutes indicate that it will be going ahead at the 'pocket park' located in front of the new fire station as previously suggested.
 
The same minutes make it clear why agreement was not reached with NV Energy on the L2 charger. NV Energy was proposing to pay $30k, whereas the town thought it would cost closer to $100k and made a counter-offer along those lines. I have no idea why it would cost so much, but apparently they could not agree on the amount.

NV Energy said they had a number of proposals from various businesses to install it on their property. They were going to pursue those if no agreement was reached with the town board, so I guess that's what's happening now.
 
Update: Talked to the town manager. The design work for the Supercharger was just completed last week. Apparently Tesla needed some feedback or participation from NV Energy on the design, which took some time. They are now hoping/expecting to start construction by the end of March.

According to supercharge.info, there's very little construction going on the US right now. Five weeks from the completion of design to the (possible) start of construction ... I don't get the sense that Tesla is in a hurry on this one.
 
Update: Talked to the town manager. The design work for the Supercharger was just completed last week. Apparently Tesla needed some feedback or participation from NV Energy on the design, which took some time. They are now hoping/expecting to start construction by the end of March.

According to supercharge.info, there's very little construction going on the US right now. Five weeks from the completion of design to the (possible) start of construction ... I don't get the sense that Tesla is in a hurry on this one.
Hmm, I was hoping to use this one at the end of May. For those of you more experienced in following these things -- how's that look now with this latest news?
 
Stopped by last night. It looks like the whole Pocket Park area is fenced off for construction. The superchargers still have a ways to go.
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