LadyOnikara
Member
I just realized that there is only one supercharger in our entire county. At least, I've only seen one listed.
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Will Tesla Buildup Superchargers to Accommodate Anticipated Demand from Ford, GM, Rivian, and whoever else, Adopting NACS circa 2024/2025?
- Thread starter houstonian
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Wow. Which county?
By me they are building Superchargers fast. A small shopping center down the hill in the East Bay is getting a 24-stall installation.
LadyOnikara
Member
LadyOnikara
Member
Oh wait. There might be more. I must only see the one because I always go the same places. lol! Found more on the Tesla website.
That's ok. I consider Superchargers for use away from home, not near home. I've never used any of the ones near my home except, perhaps to test them out. Same applies for the many in my county.
I read the thread and have found that you saw more,
But, what if there wasn't but one Supercharger in your county.
As of November, my county, the one to my NW, the one, N, the one to the NE and the one to the E, had NO Superchargers, The only one was the county to my south, which has 1, that was built about 3 years ago.
I've driven my Tesla for 6 years. and as @Earl suggests, the one nearest home if often the last one that I would use.
And I charge two Teslas off of a single 120V 15A socket, alternating them.
And the next Supercharger to my North is 150+ miles away.
Now in December, my county did get one.
TomServo
Active Member
I assume all these "third-party" DCFC stations will SEAMLESSLY INTEGRATE with the Tesla Nav and Plug and Play system? Am guessing they would add another button to toggle them ON/OFF. i.e. I only want to see Tesla SuperChargers, or do I want to see only "non-Tesla" chargers?
For those away from home travelling temporarily and access to only non-Tesla charging, it can be a serious issue. My daughter is in such a situation and the Tesla Supercharger is due in February, under construction. The only DCFC is a pathetic EVGO at 50-30 kw. A year ago we did a test charge and I had to call EVGO to get it to start. A year later, back in the came locale, she still has to use the EVGO. Good news, seems non-Tesla charging is getting better as now using EVgo is a seamless experience for her, no more phone calls. Its still pathetic at typically 30kw, its the only DCFC in town.
point is, its getting better for non-Tesla charging
Unlikely. Tesla has been listing third-party DCFC stations in Europe for a while now, but they have never implemented the CCS Plug&Charge protocol. (So you have to activate the chargers and pay some other way.) They may eventually implement P&C, but I haven't heard any rumors of it.
I saw something like this on my latest road trip. I was staying in Hanford, CA, and I thought there were zero CCS chargers. Then I spotted two of them right across the street from my parking lot. I immediately went over to see if I could get my CCS-to-NACS adapter working. I immediately got a taste of CCS woes. These were Loop EV chargers with Paymentech card readers. I could not read the card reader on the first charger in the direct sunlight. Someone had scratched it up as well, but it appears that stall was simply down. I tried the 2nd one and while I still couldn't read the display, a blue light came on and there was some beeping. But my car never charged, throwing out a cable connection fault in one error message. Never got a charge, never figured out why. Tried the Loop EV app to get things going, but while I received an identification code on my phone, the app simply errored out when I tried to put the code in. Never got the app to respond. Later on I came upon a Chargepoint charger (7kW), and while I had to use an app to get it going, at least the app worked fine and I got a little J1772 charging.
I would argue that we Tesla is the minimum standard all chargers should meet, and the others are sub-standard.
goes to my other thread, EV leaders should have banded together and told the govt IRA what is needed
at least we have the NACS, now they need to consider these chargers as critical infrastructure and get the non Teslas working at a min rate of reliability
99.995%
at least we have the NACS, now they need to consider these chargers as critical infrastructure and get the non Teslas working at a min rate of reliability
99.995%
I believe Jim in Houston meant support in terms of electrical capacity. Some distribution circuits (especially in rural areas) are still 4160Y2400V from the substation to the proposed supercharger location. An eight stall V3 supercharger needs 500KVA which is about 25% of the total capacity of such a circuit. If the circuit is near capacity (and most 4160Y2400V circuits are at or near capacity) then adding a new 500KVA service requires increasing the voltage of the circuit (typically to 12,470Y7200V) which involves replacing the transformer (often a pair of transformers) in the substation and every pole top and pad mount transformer between the substation and the proposed supercharger location, then installing a set of step down transformers immediately after the supercharger to avoid replacing the pole top and pad mount transformers along the rest of the distribution circuit. That’s a huge job and most utilities would try to make Tesla pay for it. In some cases it might be possible to instead re-conductor the circuit with larger conductors from the substation to the supercharger location, but most 4160Y2400V circuits already have the largest practical conductors from the substation to the first large customers, so it’s either raise the voltage or install a whole new distribution circuit from the substation. In some cases the substation doesn’t have space to install larger transformers. These sorts of distribution circuit upgrades could easily cost a lot more than a supercharger. Another option would be for Tesla to install a huge solar canopy and a few megapacks, but that would be even more expensive.
It’s not rare for 12,470Y7200V distribution circuits to be at or near capacity. They can be upgraded to voltages as high as 34,500Y19,920V, but most utilities don’t use distribution voltages that high.
I’m confident that many proposed supercharger locations have been rejected because the electrical capacity wasn’t available (without expensive upgrades). BTW, Tesla has the same issue siting service centers, which usually require 750KVA or more, compared to traditional stealerships which are often 100KVA or 150KVA.
I read through the latest version of the Arizona NEVI document. It gives various goals and does quite a thorough job of listing stakeholders., including utility companies. It also has a table of the power availability for each proposed locations. (Also, it lists every single public charger in the state by its unique ID.) I was looking specifically for mentions of the really poor, rural areas like the Navajo reservation. It does list highway 160 across the rez as an Alternative Fuel Corridor, but doesn't put it into the plan until the 2024-2025 update. But the document does have some interesting verbiage about poor, rural areas to the effect of arguing that the easy/profitable locations have all been taken already, and there are a number of locations that must be built, but which can't be economically justified. Not sure about the argument for someone to own the locations, but it does hint at simply having to have the state or feds foot the bill. There were a couple of tables where nobody responded from the local side, so there's a lot of work to be done to get chargers in places like Kayenta, or Springerville or most any rural town with pitiful infrastructure but which needs something to allow traffic to get through.
I have not read this document, but I’m confident that the reason at least some of these locations, probably many if not all of these locations, can’t be economically justified is that the electricity distribution circuit from the substation to the location doesn’t have enough available capacity to add another 500KVA and so the distribution circuit from the substation would have to be rebuilt.
BTW, one more reason why a distribution circuit might not have enough capacity is that in suburban and rural areas of North America, distribution circuits leave the substation as three-phase circuits and eventually branch out in three (or more) different directions as single-phase circuits. If a location is served only by one or two phases, then the circuit would have to be rebuilt from the location back toward the substation at least to where it branched from three-phase and possibility all the way back to the substation.
Thanks for posting this information. Very informative. In my area many “super” Wawa gas stations/convenience stores have been upgrading and installing SC stations, especially those closer to major limited access highways. One Wawa in particular hasn’t done so and I happened to catch the manager one day and I asked him why his location hasn’t done so when several others have in our general area - he explicitly said that the power infrastructure won’t support a SC station and it would require a major financial outlay to do so, which just didn’t make sense for his location.
Here is the 2023 Update document. I recommend skimming it to see what is in it - it is quite complete. https://azdot.gov/sites/default/fil...e-charging-infrastructure-deployment-plan.pdf
Table C-1 in Appendix C lists Utility Substation Survey data which includes the serving utility, whether or not 3-phase power exists and whether or not 600kW capacity exists for each proposed location. A few sites, like Page, have all 3 of these items 'TBD'. Others, like Cameron on 89a show APS as the utility 600kW available and nothing in the 3-phase column. Most data is filled in, but gaps in the data are clear to see.
As for the economic justification, that has nothing to do with utility capacity, although some rural sites have capacity limitations that must be addressed. On Page 100 you see 'Equity Considerations'. That basically has to do with defining DACs (DisAdvantaged Communities) and notes that 40% of certain funds are directed to DACs. There is a lot in there, and reading through it shows me a bit more about how much a station operator is supposed to be responsible for, but I think those responsibilities are subsidized in DACs compared to say, Scottsdale.
Page 55 has a table that sort of addresses the cost issue. Here is a quote of the risk/challenge item 'Stranded Assets' and a mitigation strategy. It shows that someone was at least thinking about this. "To close gaps and help to meet needs of underserved communities, some stations will be placed in rural, tribal, and/or low-income communities; these areas might initially have low station utilization and may be unprofitable for some time, but their installation is required for sufficient infrastructure coverage. Private businesses selected to implement the EV Plans may abandon stations if they prove unprofitable."
--The mitigation strategy for the above risk is: "Develop contracting mechanisms that require private companies to own the stations and keep them running long-term." I'm not sure how that is supposed to work unless it involves subsidizing the losses over time or otherwise giving favorable initial considerations when awarding a contract. The clear indication here is that the whole NEVI scheme is intending to rely on private businesses to run and maintain the EV charging infrastructure while NEVI (and other) funds are used primarily to get things started by paying some or all of the up-front costs to install equipment. But even then there are a number of required items (curbs, bollards, painted lines) that are to be paid for by the hosting business.
For me, looking specifically at highway 160 across the Navajo reservation, it's unfortunately clear that the whole plan punted the work to electrify the reservation down the road. The plan as clear mentions of the highway as an upcoming AFC (alternative fuel corridor) to be added to the plan in the 2024-2025 update, whenever that happens. Until it gets defined as an AFC, it gets no funding and no real action. Whether or not there is sufficient power along that route seems unclear. Table 29 lists new AFC candidates (basically all rural stuff at this point). This table includes US-160. The text following that table lists considerations for whether or not to actually include those routes in the future plan, and those considerations (including cost) give plenty of opportunities to de-prioritize the Navajo reservation. If I had to bet money, I'd say the indians get EV stuff last.
I think this is a today problem. Solutions exist. You’re not going to see an 8 stall V3 charger in remote rural areas. It won’t be profitable. I really think once grid storage solutions are cheap enough we don’t even need to worry so much about grid capacity. Install a battery at the charging loacation. Charge it at off peak rates for cheap. Once the grid hits certain parameters rely on the battery. Charge a peak rate for charging or sell it back to the grid (if that’s allowed).
Yes it will take coordination (why are the utilities jumping a the opportunity to bill customers for upgrades to sell more electricity).
Anyway Ford is giving away NACS adapters. The next two years will see lots of changes.
Yes it will take coordination (why are the utilities jumping a the opportunity to bill customers for upgrades to sell more electricity).
Anyway Ford is giving away NACS adapters. The next two years will see lots of changes.
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