Tesla Mobile Supercharger - Battery and Pedestals on Trailer

[Remonster]

We rolled up to this at the San Luis Obispo, CA Supercharger station which is critical station for 101 travelers going up or down the central coast. I was expecting it to be an absolute zoo the day before Thanksgiving but to my surprise they had a mobile Supercharging station putting out 120+kW to I think 8 Urban Chargers. They had a couple of Tesla engineers on site to help monitor. One of them was kind enough to stand in the rain and help plug in/unplug cars.

They said this was their first time testing it and they rolled it in all the way from Reno to augment this particular station. They expect it to be used for the recent PG&E power shutoffs and general emergency situations. They also said it has a 12hr charge time, but I didn't ask at what amperage.

 

[nwdiver]

We rolled up to this at the San Luis Obispo, CA Supercharger station which is critical station for 101 travelers going up or down the central coast. I was expecting it to be an absolute zoo the day before Thanksgiving but to my surprise they had a mobile Supercharging station putting out 120+kW to I think 8 Urban Chargers. They had a couple of Tesla engineers on site to help monitor. One of them was kind enough to stand in the rain and help plug in/unplug cars.

They said this was their first time testing it and they rolled it in all the way from Reno to augment this particular station. They expect it to be used for the recent PG&E power shutoffs and general emergency situations. They also said it has a 12hr charge time, but I didn't ask at what amperage.

Cool. So assuming 75kW (Urban Charger Rate); 3000kW / 75kW = 40. So it can charge 40 cars simultaneously. Any idea how many kWh it is? How many cars can it charge total?

 

[Remonster]

Cool. So assuming 75kW (Urban Charger Rate); 3000kW / 75kW = 40. So it can charge 40 cars simultaneously. Any idea how many kWh it is? How many cars can it charge total?

I didn't get an exact number for kWh but he mentioned 60-80 cars can be charged in total. They had already charged 40-50 cars that day. The rush was certainly slowing down when I showed up, but all stalls (including stationary ones) were full for a solid 30 minutes. Longest que I saw was 3 cars.

 

[ecarfan]

On Nov 27, 2019, TMC member @MarcoRP reported that Tesla deployed something new (first use according to a Tesla employee onsite); a “Megapack” battery mounted on a truck flatbed with 8 Urban Superchargers, parked at the San Luis Obispo CA Supercharger. His photo is shown below. The Megapack has 3MWh of capacity (see Megapack | Tesla ) but it is not clear to me if that is the actual capacity of what we see on the truck flatbed in the photo.

The idea appears to be that this new system can be moved around and used to add charging pedestals at busy locations. The San Luis Obispo SC opened in May 2018 (see Supercharger - San Luis Obispo/Madonna Inn (LIVE 5 May 2018, Oct 2019 construction for 8 new stalls) ). The 101 highway is the major travel corridor (in terms of volume) near the coast between LA and SF and points north and Thanksgiving week is of course peak travel season in the US. So this temporary deployment was a smart move by Tesla, what with all the new Model 3’s on the road.

(Photo contributed by @MarcoRP who got it from Twitter user Brian Swenson)

 

[BridgeMojo]

Jane and I were charging at SLO Madonna Inn when the flatbed pulled up to the site.

There were electricians working on a pair of destination chargers (wall mounts) by the old gas station building, and a set of six or so standard Supercharger stations that were "coming soon," roped off with yellow tape.

I thought the flatbed was bringing equipment to expand the station, but there wasn't a site prepared to receive or stage the equipment. The driver had no other instructions, and was standing by the flatbed waiting for someone to "take charge." (Jane came up with that one.)

 

[P3dStealth]

Wow this is a smart simple setup by Tesla.

 

[Uncle Paul]

This is an amazing technological advancement. They can move portable power into temporary demand areas (like festival concerts) to provide charging to their fleet.

Not noisy like generator, and no emissions.

Imagine the military is going to be all over this capability.

 

[BridgeMojo]

This is an amazing technological advancement. They can move portable power into temporary demand areas (like festival concerts) to provide charging to their fleet.

Not to mention dropping a fully-charged megapack with chargers in a power black-out area with fire danger.

 

[Blup85]

Does it get trickle charged by another supercharger or genie?

 

[MP3Mike]

Does it get trickle charged by another supercharger or genie?

It has been reported at this time that they haul it away at night and recharge it and then bring it back to where it is needed. But they mentioned that they likely needed some software updates in order to hook it to an existing Supercharger stall to "trickle" charge it.

Brian Swenson on Twitter

Brian Swenson

I talked to the guys that installed it. They said they take it back to charge it overnight. I asked why they don’t just plug it in to one of the stalls on site to do replenish continuously. They seemed to say this was in the works but needs some firmware updates to make work.

 

[BjornJ]

I used this to charge on Wednesday night driving from the Bay Area to LA.
It started charging at about 120kw, so not really a normal urban charger.
I also chatted with the Tesla Energy employees while charging.
You don’t need to be on the truck bed to unhook the cable, just lift by the cable.

 

[MarcoRP]

I used this to charge on Wednesday night driving from the Bay Area to LA.
It started charging at about 120kw, so not really a normal urban charger.
I also chatted with the Tesla Energy employees while charging.
You don’t need to be on the truck bed to unhook the cable, just lift by the cable.

I thought the Megapack was located in California, not in Australia!

 

[nwdiver]

I didn't get an exact number for kWh but he mentioned 60-80 cars can be charged in total. They had already charged 40-50 cars that day. The rush was certainly slowing down when I showed up, but all stalls (including stationary ones) were full for a solid 30 minutes. Longest que I saw was 3 cars.

Ah... looks like it's 3MWh and 1.5MW. Makes sense. 3MW would be a bit much.

 

[mociaf9]

It has been reported at this time that they haul it away at night and recharge it and then bring it back to where it is needed. But they mentioned that they likely needed some software updates in order to hook it to an existing Supercharger stall to "trickle" charge it.

Brian Swenson on Twitter

Much more likely that they will wire directly into the utility transformer (or switchgear) that is already on site to serve the normal superchargers, rather than trying to charge directly from the superchargers itself. This would provide much more power, meaning shorter recharging times. And it would avoid any challenges of dealing with the sometimes temperamental power coming from the superchargers, some of which may not be in full working order.

 

[MP3Mike]

Much more likely that they will wire directly into the utility transformer (or switchgear) that is already on site to serve the normal superchargers, rather than trying to charge directly from the superchargers itself. This would provide much more power, meaning shorter recharging times. And it would avoid any challenges of dealing with the sometimes temperamental power coming from the superchargers, some of which may not be in full working order.

But that would also require permits and a sparky on-site. If they just pull up and plug into a existing Supercharger stall, or stalls, it likely doesn't require a permit. And who wants to go through a lot of permitting for a temporary 1 or 2 day install?

 

[Chuq]

Opinion...
Long term, these will probably not be used for things like Thanksgiving or similar long weekends - after all, these events occur regularly, every year at the same time, and all over the country. The best way of handing these queues is to build single large stations, like Kettleman City, where there are so many stalls that a space is freed up every minute on average, so queues clear quickly.

I expect it was used at SLO as a trial, or because their supercharger rollout did not match traffic growth at the rate they had hoped.

They probably would be better suited to sporadic, variable, localised events:

- Major events at one-off locations (Superbowl)
- Natural phenomena (solar eclipse)
- Disasters resulting in widespread outages (California bushfires)
- Disasters resulting in evacuations (cyclones)
- Events with high proportion of Tesla owners (Tesla events, SpaceX launches)

 

[miimura]

Weather was also a factor in this Megapack Supercharger deployment. There was snow on the Grapevine, so I-5 was closed for about 9 hours, which pushed many people to the 101 corridor and caused long lines at SLO, even with the extra mobile stalls available.

 

[EchoDelta]

...hook it to an existing Supercharger stall to "trickle" charge it.

Brian Swenson on Twitter

You gotta celebrate how far we’ve come when a small multiple of 0.25MW is “trickle”

 

[BM3B]

Very cool! I heard it’s coming back on Sunday to SLO.

I am a little disappointed to see the diesel cab, hopefully next time they can use the Tesla Semi. Progress is beautiful

 

[BM3B]

Elon please give Guido a SEMI, it will blow up the internet