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Wiki UK and Ireland Supercharger Site News

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If the TeslaFi data is accurate, this means that the Ecotricity charger efficiency is only 87.3% - I think that's very low. Solid state power electronics should be achieving well above 95%.

I think you are being a bit optimistic there, with many of these designs needing two power conversion stages (with the need for power factor correction etc). Tesla claim only 91.5% for the V2 supercharger; I haven't seen a figure for V3, but V3 is definitely a two-stage design.

Also, your measurement probably has more losses outside the charger itself. At the very least, you have the cable/connector losses which won't be trivial with the chargers located in cabinets some metres away from the charging stalls. Some high-power CCS equipment has active cooling of the connector and cable (so losses for the cooling gear, but also pointing to very significant losses in the parts that need cooling), though I am not sure if either Tesla or Ecotricity are using that.

If the Tesla-end measurement is at the battery terminals, then you have all the vehicle auxiliaries (coolant circulation, control electronics etc.) to add. If the Ecotricity measurement is literally the electricity meter reading, then it includes cooling auxiliaries for the charger (fans, probably some measure of liquid cooling?, control gear).

So while I'd agree with you that 87.3% has room for improvement, it's not particularly surprising, especially if some of these external losses are included.
 
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Lesson learnt.

Ecotricity charged my credit card £9.42. Tesla logged 27.4 kWh used. That's 34.4 p/kWh, against an advertised 30 p/kWh and the supercharger rate of 33 p/kWh.

If the TeslaFi data is accurate, this means that the Ecotricity charger efficiency is only 87.3% - I think that's very low. Solid state power electronics should be achieving well above 95%. Though, it's worth adding that the charger spent a reasonable time approaching 100% charge, so the efficiency would have dropped as the charger was only partially loaded, but I wouldn't have expected this much of a drop.

Luke
is the tesla figure that received or that stored. It may be the latter in which case any power used on Aircon etc while the charge is happening would fall between the Ecotricity number and the Tesla one which would make the Eco one look worse than it really is. But it doesn't look good
 
Trumpington mini update: nothing happened most of last week (half term), but tonight the tarmac has been patched and there was a guy still on-site wrestling cables into the transformer. So the Tesla side of things will be finished imminently. However, the DNO seem to still be on holiday- no change to any of their stuff- so could still be a while. EA58CDA3-1E9F-40DF-AAEB-71E198AB9F99.jpeg
 
Aberystwyth continues its slow progress. I can take pictures of infrastructure stuff but I'd rather will wait until I see a Tesla product on site and then we can get excited. Cardiff estimated 3 months or so from Aber is now to get all the relevant licences etc.
 
is the tesla figure that received or that stored. It may be the latter in which case any power used on Aircon etc while the charge is happening would fall between the Ecotricity number and the Tesla one which would make the Eco one look worse than it really is. But it doesn't look good
The figure is 'used' rather than 'added', as reported in TeslaFi. It's about 1kWh higher than 'added', due to air-con etc. as you said.

To look at some of Arg's points, it would be worth comparing a supercharger invoice with TeslaFi. The 'unseen' losses, at least from the DC part of the system, should be similar between the two.
 
Can confirm that the Cardiff superchargers are now available overnight, heard reports that they weren't before. Went last night around midnight.
Charge rate seems to have improved from the ~50kW levels too, managed to peak at 157kW at 25% SoC.
Yup, Cardiff deffo working fine out of hours yesterday - took a minute or two to walk to the Waitrose next door, score supper and by the time I got back had enough charge to get back to Brum. Result.
 
I think you are being a bit optimistic there, with many of these designs needing two power conversion stages (with the need for power factor correction etc). Tesla claim only 91.5% for the V2 supercharger; I haven't seen a figure for V3, but V3 is definitely a two-stage design.
I don't have any experience with EV charging hardware, but the VSDs I'm familiar with are typically around 98% efficient at full load, per stage. Allowing for two stages (Active Front End with unity PF, DC Bus, DC/AC Inverter), and other losses (motor cooling, inverter cooling, etc.), a typical system should achieve > 95% efficiency at full load.

I haven't seen any block diagrams, etc. for superchargers, but I could imagine that they're AC/DC and then DC/DC? Can you point me towards anything?
 
I haven't seen any block diagrams, etc. for superchargers, but I could imagine that they're AC/DC and then DC/DC? Can you point me towards anything?

I haven't got links to them, but there are photos floating around of both the rating plate and the insides of the V3, plus various public statements about their capabilities. It is very clear that the V3 cabinet has a single shared front end driving a DC bus at 900V, with then individual step-down converters for the four outputs. The DC bus is potentially connected outside the cabinet - they've talked about doing this for batteries, though I haven't seen any evidence of installations actually doing this yet (certainly in the UK), but it's clear from the rating plate that the V3 can only achieve maximum output if the DC bus is connected. However, it would be interesting to know if they use the DC bus to connect 'sideways' between cabinets at a site. Each V3 cabinet has only 350kW max input, so sharing is still a significant constraint with 4 cars capable of taking over 200kW each; however, if the cabinets at a site had their DC busses connected then the total input would be shared across all the stalls and significantly reduce the chance of hitting a sharing limit.

V2 superchargers are different: they simply contain 12 of the charger modules out of the (pre-facelift) Model S, with switching in groups of 3 between the two outputs. These modules are of a design that's current constrained (limit of 16A/phase/module) and so give more power at higher input voltage: they were rated 12kW input power installed in the car (nominal 230/400V input), but in superchargers they run them at higher voltage where available and can get over 12kW output power if run from USA-style 277/480V - some sites in the UK have a Tesla-owned transformer to get 480V, others have a dedicated DNO transformer tapped at the max acceptable voltage (400+10%) and a very short cable run, some small sites just run on what was already available on site so give inferior charge rates. I haven't analysed the internal design of these units, but since they are in the cars people have done teardowns on them and you can probably find more info if you look around. The 91.5% efficiency figure I quoted comes from an official Tesla spec sheet for the supercharger (it's marked "under NDA", but they attached it to one of their UK planning applications so it became public).
 
I'll try and get an updated photo for you tomorrow.
There is currently a big shiny green metal box over the hole previously seen. And a lot of curled up pipes. Seemingly no equipment on site yet or anything dug ready for the chargers.
More updates for Aberystwyth!
I can confirm as of today there are 2 pallets covered by a white sheet with the Tesla logo on them, so this this definitely the location for them. (I'm not sure how many are one each pallet? I guess 2 per pallet? )

They're also digging up the car park now to put them in.
 
More updates for Aberystwyth!
I can confirm as of today there are 2 pallets covered by a white sheet with the Tesla logo on them, so this this definitely the location for them. (I'm not sure how many are one each pallet? I guess 2 per pallet? )

They're also digging up the car park now to put them in.
Any photos?
 
Great news!!
Reading Service Centre has now had its new power supply installed right next to the area planned for superchargers. The question now is how many and if the adjacent building will be a coffee lounge for charging!!
More good news!!
Looks like the fit out of the Reading SC is in progress now 👍🏻
Nothing round the back though where the rumoured superchargers/lounge might be.
Pics from today 😉
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Even more good news!
Stoke Trentham Gardens Supercharger is almost complete.
tarmac repair and finishing is happening now.

8x V3 Superchargers.
Rough postcode is ST4 8JG but I am trying to get hold of the exact co-ordinates.
 
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