CHAdeMO experience in Minneapolis/St. Paul area

ruby110 said:

Anyone have experience using the CHAdeMO adapter at any of the CHAdeMO stations in and around Minneapolis? I will be traveling through in Sep. it looks like Greenlots works well but I have no experience with them.

Thanks.

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Yep, got my chademo adapter about a month ago. I've had great success with it all around the TC metro area. Been to the Goodwill stores in St. Louis Park, Shakopee, and Monticello; the BP station at 36th & Lyndale in south Mpls.; and the Nissan dealer in Mankato. All of them worked swimmingly. The Mankato Nissan charge was free; so was the BP station but that was just a one-time promotional deal. For the Goodwill chargers, you need either the Greenlots RFID card or the Greenlots phone app. I've just been using the phone app. You have to tell the app the number of the station you're at to turn it on; not all the chargers have that number displayed, and if you're at one that doesn't, just use the Plugshare phone app to look it up. Cost is 20 cents/minute which works out to $12/hour, not unreasonable in my opinion. And I always got 120-150mph of charge.

By the way, if there are any chargers you'd like me to test, let me know and I'll go check them out.

The Hilton on France Ave is very close to the Doubletree and has a 40amp HPWC.

Ok Ruby. I have just charged there to check it out, didn't know their formal policy. Hopefully none of this will matter and there will be a Supercharger in Minneapolis and Brainerd by the time of your trip.

ruby110 said:

@glenhurst: a very generous offer! I was also looking at the City of Hopkins. More generally, I am currently planning to stay at the Doubletree at 7800 Normandale Blvd but that might have to change. Can you recommend where I should charge if I stay there? I will be coming from Eau Claire (or possibly, Albert Lea) and heading to the Brainerd area the next day. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

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If you're staying at the Doubletree, you have a few choices. One option is the Tesla showroom/service center over just off Hwy. 169 at Valley View Rd. (it's actually on Washington Ave., but you'd get off at Valley View.) All they have are HPWCs, but I think they're 80 amp, so if you have dual-chargers, you can get nearly 60mph. But they're available only during business hours.

For CHAdeMO, the quickest stop would be at the charger at Goodwill on Hwy. 100 in St. Louis Park. Come up Hwy. 100 (aka Normandale Blvd. when you get south of I-494), get off at the 36th St. exit, turn right, go to the stop light, and turn left into the LA Fitness/Goodwill parking lot. The charger is brand new, and I've gotten 150mph there recently. The parking spaces tend to be ICEd because there's no sign saying 'EV charging' for some odd reason. But if you get there early in the morning before Goodwill opens, the parking spaces should be empty. There's a Target across the road and a Byerly's grocery store just beyond that (you'll go by them when you get off 100) if you want to get something to eat while charging. The point is you can get to this charger easily, and when you're done, just continue up 100 to I-394 which will take you to downtown and to I-35W so you can go on to Duluth. The Hopkins one is good, too, but it's a little harder to get to, that is, it's farther away from the freeway (169).

ruby110 said:

Thanks, glenhurst. I'll try to time my charge at Goodwill to avoid ICEing. I charged at the service center last Fall and I contacted them again for this Fall. They responded that I could charge there but indicated that there were many CHAdeMO chargers in the area. I believe they would help but prefer that I charge elsewhere if possible. Completely understandable. So they are my plan B.
I have dual chargers so that would be effective.

BTW, is the ICEing from Goodwill customers or LA Fitness customers? I'm thinking of charging at night.

Thanks, again.

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The ICEing is from Goodwill customers. The LA Fitness building about 70 meters to the east. It's a huge parking lot. The LA Fitness building used to be a car dealership, but went out of business. LA Fitness bought the whole thing, but then sold or leased part of the parking lot to Goodwill who built a new building. There's plenty of parking, but Goodwill made the mistake of putting the charger close to the building entrance, so naturally ICE cars want to park there. I wish that they had located it at the north end of the lot. It wouldn't get ICEd there and we EV owners are a stout lot who enjoy a good walk. ;-) Goodwill closes at 9pm so if you're there after that you should have no trouble, maybe even earlier. And the LA Fitness customers won't park there--it's too far away.

Just to provide a few more data points:

Today, Memorial Day, I drove up to Forest Lake to checkout the Chademo charger at the Goodwill there. Perhaps because it's a holiday, perhaps Goodwill is really on a roll, but the entire parking lot was full! This meant the Chademo charger was ICEd, even though it's on the side of the building way at the back--a great location because it's far out of the way and therefore unlikely to be ICEd, except that the whole place was packed! There are also two 30 amp ChargePoint chargers near the front corner of the building, with signs that say "Electric car charging only", and even with that one of the spots was ICEd. There is no such sign by the Chademo and it's location is such that it would seem unnecessary. Fortunately, I didn't actually need the charge, but I mention it in case someone makes plans that require stopping there. I also checked in on Plugshare noting the inability to charge.

After that, I stopped at the Chademo at the Unity - Unitarian church in St. Paul. Nice little parking lot that was nearly full, but the charging space was left available. It appears to supply 100 amps, so I got "only" 119mph of range. But they also only charge $10/hour for charging, vs. $12/hour that most of the other Chademo chargers in the area cost.

The last stop was the Chademo/CCS charger in Hopkins. It's in the parking lot of a grocery store, but it's at the outer edge and there are lots of other spaces around, so I had no trouble getting at the charger. I got 43kw for 145mph.

FYI It is a good idea to get a Greenlots rfid card ahead of time. It costs $5 for the card. You can then link a credit card to the Greenlots card.