Wincester/Southampton Supercharger

[Shooter]

I used the Sainsbury's Winchester one last Monday. Desperately need to have some open on the M5, Wales and Essex as I've been struggling there but the Sainsbury's deal alluded to earlier sounds good.

 

[dpeilow]

Just popped up there to do the shopping, recycling and put air in the tyres. It was clear the whole time.

I noticed that massive green box next to the supercharger cabinet too. Are they really using a step up transformer? They've also fenced the whole installation in.

 

[mgboyes]

Just popped up there to do the shopping, recycling and put air in the tyres. It was clear the whole time.

I noticed that massive green box next to the supercharger cabinet too. Are they really using a step up transformer? They've also fenced the whole installation in.

I'd be amazed if it's a step up transformer - if that was a required part of the setup they'd be at all sites and they clearly aren't. And since SC cabinets are known to contain 12 of the same rectifier modules that are fitted in the cars, and those are designed to run of everyday 415V 3 phase, it would be a very strange idea to run them from a different supply in the SC case.

If anything it may be a stepdown transformer (or it may just be some very chunky cabling, isolators, and meters). If Tesla are specifying that they want say 200A 3 phase supply today (enough for 1 SC cabinet / 2 bays) but that they expect 600 or 800A in the future (6 or 8 bays), I bet the DNO would bring in a 10kV or 33kV feed, assuming there was one available reasonably close by, and a dedicated transformer.

These green boxes seem to go in at sites that are expected to get big.

In Denmark they just opened a 12 bay supercharger - I can't imagine what the power cabling for that looks like!

 

[dpeilow]

Wish I'd taken a picture of it now. It's huge, compared to the SC cabinet. It's quite tall and relatively thin, not a 11kV transformer I'm sure. It's painted the same colour green as the street cabinets that BT use for phone line terminations.

I wonder if it's buffer batteries?

 

[mgboyes]

Wish I'd taken a picture of it now. It's huge, compared to the SC cabinet. It's quite tall and relatively thin, not a 11kV transformer I'm sure. It's painted the same colour green as the street cabinets that BT use for phone line terminations.

I wonder if it's buffer batteries?

The one at Maidstone is pretty big in every direction - a lot bigger than an SC cabinet.

Definitely not buffer batteries I'd say. They're mostly a myth at this point (I think there's just one US SC site that is known to have them, despite claims that they're all over the place).

Crappy nighttime photo:

 

[dpeilow]

Begs the question, what is it then?

At Winchester they haven't really left room to grow the SC cabinets as this mini compound is already encroaching on the access lane for the carwash.