It is lower powered, but you should get more than 70kW from an urban stall. The point where it starts to taper down to lower power varies by car model but should hold above 70kW until at least 70% SOC. Of course, I'm talking about California weather. Cold batteries have limited charging power.
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Supercharger - Westminster, CA (LIVE 22 Dec 2018, 24 Urban stalls)
- Thread starter mociaf9
- Start date
Jedi2155
Model 3 has Arrived.
Anyone else notice the new Electrify America stalls they're building across from the superchargers?
Hankmancini
Member
I love a few miles away so will not likely use this location, but drive by often. There is now a sign for "Wash and Charge!" Will stop by and get more details .
Today the site was full with 4 cars waiting. That's the first time I have had to wait there.
Once I was able to plug in I only got 54 kW. Shortly after, 3 or 4 cars left and my charge rate went up to 62 kW. Still not the 72 kW I usually get there when the site isn't that busy.
At some point charging suddenly stopped and I had to manually restart it. I noticed a few other people getting out of their cars unplugging and plugging in again, so I assume they experienced the same.
Once I was able to plug in I only got 54 kW. Shortly after, 3 or 4 cars left and my charge rate went up to 62 kW. Still not the 72 kW I usually get there when the site isn't that busy.
At some point charging suddenly stopped and I had to manually restart it. I noticed a few other people getting out of their cars unplugging and plugging in again, so I assume they experienced the same.
TerranApart
Member
Perhaps the station's overall load reached the transformer limit.
For example, assuming a 1500kVA transformer running at 100% capacity, that leaves ~62kW per charger, not counting overhead/losses.
Does anyone have a photo of the transformer boilerplate?
The distribution grid in that area could also be seeing higher loads, lower voltages, or fluctuations.
I believe the site limit is lower than the 24 stalls * 72 kw (and losses in the chargers and transformer). It's something I have seen at pretty much all Superchargers that were at or new capacity. Once the site gets full the charge rates are dropping across the board. I believe most sites are slightly underpowered to keep cost reasonable. It makes sense for most sites where it's rate that they get full. I think all the urban charger sites are not really speed critical anyways. People use them to top off while at the mall or at a restaurant. 5 or 10 min longer really doesn't matter.
Jedi2155
Model 3 has Arrived.
Reaching the transformer limit doesn't automatically reduce the power to supercharger. Transformers are passive devices with no load limiting capabilities. The issue would be the supercharger PCS overheating or having a fault.
On a side note, I believe the transformer is 2500 kVA but I'll take a picture next time I'm in the area to confirm.
TerranApart
Member
I understand that, but also would expect Tesla to have properly configured the supercharging hardware to adjust power limits according to the transformer size.
If you do get a chance to photo the transformer, that would be fantastic.
xilex
Model P3D
Anyone visit this supercharger frequently? Large chunk of stalls either have trouble sustaining charging rate (starts at 60 kW then drops to 0 and stuck < 5 kW or fluctuates up/down) or today it was stuck at 40 kW. I don't think it's just me. See some other cars charge then leave a few min later. One time I tried 4 stalls right next to each other all with same issue. Been happening for at least three weeks now. The working ones have sustained 60+ kW rates.
This has generally been my experience with this location on the 5 occasions that I've charged there over the last 18 months. I've never gotten anywhere near 72kW with a warmed up battery and low SOC%, but it seems like 47kW is the max it will feed my 2013 S85. It's not a huge deal for me as I've never had to wait for a stall and I take the time to shop at Target for some household items. I find that despite charging at 32-47kW, it only takes about 20-30 minutes more than I would have hoped for. However, I would skip this SuC site if I was driving through on a road-trip unless I needed a 1.5hr long break.
When I drove down the 405, passing this site yesterday, I saw a whole bunch of construction near the existing stalls, in the exact shape (rectangular) hinting at a possible expansion. Anyone in the area able to check it out?
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