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Weird Supercharger Incident (Reduced Charge)

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Wk057 has confirmed that superchargers work if the cars software has been enabled on the car for supercharging but theres no VIN identification or other identification for supercharging to work at this moment. Conclusion no throttle if supercharging doesn't identify the car out side of if the feature is enabled in the software.

That can't be true. I was in Manteca today and had reduced charge at 42KW. I called SC support and she took my name and looked up my account. She said that I was in slot 1A and that I was indeed experiencing reduced charge. She said the car in 1B was also at 42KW. She then said all the stacks were at 42KW. They were all being used and there was a wait to get a slot.
 
I had virtually the same thing happen to me on a road trip this weekend. Charged at 114 kW for about 5 mins, then amps dropped to about 60A and stayed there. Tried another stall, same deal except the amps fell almost immediately.

The issue was Range Mode: If you leave range mode turned on, the forced cooling fans do not run -- the car attempts to cool everything through the passive radiator, and that's not enough on a hot day. The charging rate will be limited due to high battery temperature.

The next day I turned range mode off and charged at the same supercharger and everything was fine.

I've charged in 109 degree weather with the cooling fans and AC sounding like a jet engine all the while the charge curve was identical to a cool day. i.e. 120KW up to about 35%. I was in range mode. I've never turned range mode off.
 
Same issue last night charging at Toronto SC. SoC <10%, few other cars charging but none sharing my charger stack. Charging ramped to ~96kW as usual, but abruptly cut to 20kW after about 8 minutes of charging. Had to switch stalls twice, and got the same issue all 3 times.

Same issue as in Port Hope this past weekend.

And what did Tesla say when you called them *WHILE* this was happening on each occasion?
 
That can't be true. I was in Manteca today and had reduced charge at 42KW. I called SC support and she took my name and looked up my account. She said that I was in slot 1A and that I was indeed experiencing reduced charge. She said the car in 1B was also at 42KW. She then said all the stacks were at 42KW. They were all being used and there was a wait to get a slot.

When you plug in to the supercharger the system looks that the software is enabled in your car. Supercharger support has all of the information of who is where but wk057 enabled and disabled the feature and played around with it without even paying for it on a 2013 60. There are many reasons you would get a reduced charge rate. Most times your battery is already very full or the supercharger is not operating properly because of a variety of reasons. Maybe they need to restart the supercharger or its too hot outside or your battery is too cold or the supercharger is receiving reduced power like st. Louis or laurel and needs to be boosted. Also when two cars are sharing like using 1A and 1B the sharing doesnt consistenly use all of the power because of the power curves involved. Plenty of people I know have used superchargers exclusively and never see a reduced rate unless the above is occurring. Supercharger support doesn't go into this much detail unless you ask. Information overload for some people.
 
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I've noticed several times now where my car has started charging at 115-125kW but started tapering far more severely than I would normally expect and I've found that moving to another stall (even the other stall on a particular pair) results in much faster charging. My theory is that there's some sort of temperature sensor in the connector (each time this has happened I've noticed that the handle has become quite warm) leading to premature tapering in order to prevent the connection from becoming too hot. Each time that I've examined the the connectors on the 'slow' stall I've noticed that they look rather dirty, which I believe is increasing the resistance and thus the heat generated across the connection.

I recall reading somewhere that Tesla does not recommend using contact cleaner on the charging port and supply connector, but I'm tempted to start periodically cleaning my charging port (taking appropriate precautions against the slight chance of shock!) to see if this makes any difference in handle temperature or taper rate when I supercharge.

Thoughts?
 
So last night I got a bottle of contact cleaner and some cotton swabs. I sprayed a bit of the cleaner onto one and then holding onto the swab with insulated pliers I swabbed out the contacts on my charging port. After 18 months and 32k miles, I was impressed by the amount of crap that came off onto the swabs.

I'll be interested to see if I notice a difference during my next supercharging session.