Charged at Canberra airport today - full house and was only getting something like 33kw. I thought the superchargers are being divided into pairs (1A, 1B) etc and the worst it could happen is that you share the stated maximum power with someone else in your pair (ie each getting half of 130kw) but didn't know how busy the rest of the stations will negatively impact your charging speed further? Does this only happen with older superchargers?
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Supercharger charging speed throttling when busy
- Thread starter Futuretech
- Start date
The drive to Goulburn will warm up the battery a lot more than a short drive through Canberra though.
Very cold today so without a decent preheat charging can be slower too.
I’ve been at Canberra with a full house and people complaining is slow, but I’ve only experienced it if it’s the start of my trip. After a drive from Sydney it seems fine.
Very cold today so without a decent preheat charging can be slower too.
I’ve been at Canberra with a full house and people complaining is slow, but I’ve only experienced it if it’s the start of my trip. After a drive from Sydney it seems fine.
Two weeks ago I drove from Sydney to Canberra and preheated. 22% SOC. At Canberra, I had to share with a car in the adjacent slot and we were each getting only about 43 to 50kW each. Then he left and it remained unchanged. After a while, there were only two of us, on different units and it was still only 50kW! So really pretty bad charging rate. I was wondering if I had stopped and restarted the charge if I would have got more kW but ended up giving it away. So definitely some sort of limitation happening at Majura Park.
I was the only one there past Thursday morning. Arrived with a preheated battery with 23% SOC. Initially received 86kW and then dropped to 60kW very quickly. It then started to ramp back up slowly eventually hitting 92kW.
Seemed strange to me as I haven't had that before. Checking plugshare shows the SC is likely misbehaving.
Seemed strange to me as I haven't had that before. Checking plugshare shows the SC is likely misbehaving.
I last charged there about 3 weeks ago, drove/preconditioned from Sydney, air temperature was about 10C. I just looked back in my TeslaFi stats and got a peak charge rate of about 112kW (from when I plugged in up to about 50% SoC) then the curve dropped down progressively to 60kW by the time I disconnected and left at 80% SoC.
It was about 8am so I was the only car at the charger for most of the session and I used the furthest bay from the entrance to the charger (whichever number that one is, sorry).
I have always had good charging speeds there, but I'm invariably either travelling from Sydney or the Snowy Mountains to get there and always navigate to it (ie pre-condition). If you haven't been navigating there for 1 hour or more, especially in colder conditions, your battery isn't going to be at the optimal temperature for really quick charging. Every winter there are PlugShare comments about the site being slow, and I have spoken with drivers there complaining at getting a slow charge (while my car is having a completely normal session at the same time), and quite often it is someone who has either just had a short drive there or didn't navigate to it (even if they have been driving for several hours).
Not saying there mightn't be a problem there currently, just that you sometimes have to read into the PlugShare comments more than might be said.
It was about 8am so I was the only car at the charger for most of the session and I used the furthest bay from the entrance to the charger (whichever number that one is, sorry).
I have always had good charging speeds there, but I'm invariably either travelling from Sydney or the Snowy Mountains to get there and always navigate to it (ie pre-condition). If you haven't been navigating there for 1 hour or more, especially in colder conditions, your battery isn't going to be at the optimal temperature for really quick charging. Every winter there are PlugShare comments about the site being slow, and I have spoken with drivers there complaining at getting a slow charge (while my car is having a completely normal session at the same time), and quite often it is someone who has either just had a short drive there or didn't navigate to it (even if they have been driving for several hours).
Not saying there mightn't be a problem there currently, just that you sometimes have to read into the PlugShare comments more than might be said.
Lots of good answers in this thread, but nobody has specifically answered this one. Interestingly, this happens more at V3 stations. Let me explain...
We all know V3 Superchargers can deliver 250kW, right? What if the station is full and every car is ready to receive 250kW, can the station deliver that much power? Nope!
V3 Superchargers use 1 "cabinet" (the big white box thing) for every 4 charging connectors. Each cabinet can do ~375 kW or so, or ~94KW per connector.
Note: the cabinet can route power however is needed between cars, so it doesn't matter where you plug in. The station can do this between cabinets as well (more or less) so as a driver you still never need to worry about where to plug in at a V3-only Supercharger.
So if we do the math at an 8 stall Supercharger (typical, but small) it only takes three cars requesting 250kW at once to fully max out the station, or 5 cars requesting 150 kW. Not a lot! At the point the available power is (based on some rules) balanced across the cars and likely nobody will get full speed.
That sounds terrible! Actually, it's not as bad in practice due to the rather short time 3 and Y can charge fast (only a few minutes and then they taper) but I have noticed if you arrive at a busy 8 stall V2 station ready to accept 250kw it's common to "only" get low 200s.
Interestingly, V3 sites in Australia have been using 1 cabinet per 3 charging connectors.
Sunday was pretty chilly, too! Don't think it got above about 8C all day.
You're right. It was below 5C at the time. A little nippy. Waiting in the uber pen near the airport pick-up lounge, running air con at 21C, my seat warmer on medium. and YouTube, drained 1% of my battery. If I was concerned about range, I'd have dropped it to 17C.
Strange how they have such a different strategy than in the US! I checked Supercharger.info and you're totally correct.
In the US (and I thought in Europe but I haven't checked) you almost never see 6 or 9 stall V3 stations (and there are lots of 8 stall and 12 stall stations). For the tiny 3 stall stations it makes perfect sense, with 4 stalls the total station power is so low it's easy to max out.
I wonder what made them decide to do so many 6 and 9 stall stations in Australia but not elsewhere. Very odd. Once Cybertruck and other big battery vehicles come out the overall station power limits at 8 stall V3 SCs are going to become much more constraining.
Yeah, you just posted that image so you could humble-brag about having the most k’s on the clock of any Model 3 in Australia
Pfft. Not even close. Just the 3rd highest odometer SR+ on TeslaFi. Though yes, probably the highest odometer SR+ in Australia ;-)Yeah, you just posted that image so you could humble-brag about having the most k’s on the clock of any Model 3 in Australia
I always chuckle a little when I hear about range anxiety, while I pile on >1300km/wk. And most weeks that's mostly confined to a span of 40 hours Friday nights to Sunday lunchtimes. And my home charging set-up still draws 10 amps on a 3rd party imitation UMC, running out my ajar bedroom window, in sub-zero nights. I'll supercharge to 40-50% if I think I have to, and trickle charge the rest of the way. Maybe 60% if I still have an hour or two left in me.
It's the modern equivalent of walking 12 miles to school, barefoot in the snow, uphill each way.
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