Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Richard230]

Last week I noticed a group of new Tesla Superchargers that had recently been installed in the Linda Mar Shopping Center, behind the Safeway grocery store and accessed via the driveway in front of the McDonald's restaurant. These things went up very quickly, maybe in about three weeks. Attached is a photo of the Tesla chargers. I notice that there are several large electrical equipment boxes at the facility. Are these backup batteries? I would think you could use some backup power as the power does go out in the city occasionally, like it did for 9 hours one day last week. No doubt these chargers will be welcome to Tesla drivers touring the coast. There are a lot of Tesla Model 3s in town, but those seem to spend most of their time sitting in their owner's home driveways connected to their home electrical outlets so they might get much use by the local residents.

Attached is a photo of the new Supercharger facility and another photo showing the little-used EVgo L2 chargers located about 100 feet away in the same parking lot. Those chargers were installed a few years ago but I rarely see any cars actually plugged into them.

[Grauteufel]

I doubt they would be backup batteries (unless you mean batteries to run the monitoring hardware/ups for controller), they seem about the size of standard cabinets for transformers and SCADA panels. Cabinets of that size liekly wouldn't even contain enough cells to supply more than a single vehicle charge.

[Richard230]

Well, could they contain batteries to act as a buffer for the times during heavy usage? The cabinets looked pretty large to me. I think they were about 7 or 8 feet tall and about 4 feet wide. The large cabinet with the doors looks to be the electrical equipment box. Since these are likely a standardized installation, I be someone here knows for sure. Maybe Don Tom?

[Specter]

Those look like the transformers and switching gear.  They run off 450 vac 3 phase Im thinking, unless they 4160's them, however I doubt that since that's a whole different ball park of electrical repairs to work on.

The power coming in is probably several thousand volts,you need to step it down to 450, thats what those boxes are doing

aaron

[DonTom]

Last week I noticed a group of new Tesla Superchargers that had recently been installed in the Linda Mar Shopping Center, behind the Safeway grocery store and accessed via the driveway in front of the McDonald's restaurant.

Those are the new Version 4 Tesla Superchargers. They type that are compatible with CCS--kinda. Some vehicles only, but are plug and walk away, just as with Tesla.


But they will NOT work with Energica unless they have Magic Dock and then one must use the Tesla App. But it's not needed there as they already have CCS chargers in the same lot.


See here on Plugshare.   I see the CCS there are the old 50KW EV-GO chargers. Most of those are being removed from service. 

I hear the very first V4 superchargers (250KW and lack the hole in the middle)in the USA were installed in Sparks, around five miles from my Reno house.

-Don-  Auburn, CA

[DonTom]

Well, could they contain batteries to act as a buffer for the times during heavy usage? The cabinets looked pretty large to me. I think they were about 7 or 8 feet tall and about 4 feet wide. The large cabinet with the doors looks to be the electrical equipment box. Since these are likely a standardized installation, I be someone here knows for sure. Maybe Don Tom?

There are no batteries involved. The large box is where most of the electric stuff is. The "chargers" themselves have very little inside them. There is the power bus, the bottle that holds the coolant which is ran down the cable and very little else.


I have seen inside them when I was charging using a Magic Dock here.  While I was charging my SS9- (Aug 22) a Tesla Supercharger repair man was working on a charger a few down from me.  So we BSed for quite a while. BTW, he showed up in a Tesla Model 3, not a work van. But he knew what the problem was remotely, coolant leak from the cable. He got an alarm at his house near South Lake Tahoe and brought a new cable with him.


He knew very little about electronics or the chargers. But he knew all he needed to know to repair them, such as how to replace the charging cable, the main problem with Tesla Superchargers (probably with all the other DC fast chargers as well).


-Don-  Auburn, CA

[Richard230]

So what is in the three boxes next to the electrical cabinet with the red warning sign on it?  You would think that if there was any nasty electrical stuff inside those cabinets, there would be red warning signs on those too. 

[DonTom]

So what is in the three boxes next to the electrical cabinet with the red warning sign on it?  You would think that if there was any nasty electrical stuff inside those cabinets, there would be red warning signs on those too. 

See attached.






-Don-  Auburn, CA

[Richard230]

So those three cabinets contain switching devices that operate the individual charging outlets? It looks like each cabinet would control four of the charging stations.

[DonTom]

So those three cabinets contain switching devices that operate the individual charging outlets? It looks like each cabinet would control four of the charging stations.

Controls all of it. The individual charge stations have almost nothing inside them. I have seen the inside and I was surprised at how little stuff is inside the "charger". I didn't even notice any rectifiers or anything like that. Just the large HV strips that the charging cable connects to and the coolant bottle to feed the coolant down the cable.


But to be 100% sure, I would have to look again. I wasn't paying a whole lot of attention to the guts, but that was what I remember. Mainly how little stuff is inside each charger, just large metal strips to handle the high current that connect to the charging cable.


-Don-  Auburn, CA