Cheyenne, WY Electrify America

Alt-View1 said:
I stopped by late this afternoon. They have run into "modem problems". Once resolved, still need to download software and firmware, which they estimate will take "upto 8 hours". The hope to have the station operating "by the end of the week". They recommend not making plans to use the station until it shows it's available in the Electrify America app.
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I really appreciate the update. Still fingers crossed for later this week.
 
Alt-View1 said:
Stopped by today. They are "commissioning the charging station." According to the electricians, the delay was due to Black Hills Power taking more than a year to provide the meter for the site!
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Oh, wow! Thanks for the photos @Alt-View1!

I sure wish I could have been there to capture some video. It probably would have been a world's first look at how they provision a brand new DC fast charger site. Of course, I'd keep a safe distance and not constantly film them. I'd just get a few snippets and a walk around from a distance. That looks all so neat! They even had an F-150 Lightning there to do an actual charge test. ⚡
 
Good to see this finally coming around! I'll make sure to check on it here over the next day or so. I'm skeptical of the power claims given the transformer and the meter story (I've know a few commercial places get meters over this timeframes locally). The power claim would be pretty easy to test. Load up 3 vehicles that can all pull 150+ and see if it derates.
 
The good news is that this site has been added to AFDC as "OPEN" (with the laughable open date of 6/22/23). This is fairly common for EA to add sites to AFDC (as OPEN) prior to their actually going live, but it typically means that we're within a week or two of it actually going live.
 
Swung by quickly this morning. It isn't turned on, but all the plastic is off finally and meter seems to be active. So likely just clearing up those modem problems, updating, and flipping the switch. I'll check periodically until there is an update here that it is active.

The transformer is still the 300kva unit. The high assumption of a power factor is 1... which would still limit the site as a total to 300kW. It isn't unheard of for the power factor to be .9 (or even .8 in older units). A more typical .92 would would have this site peaking around 275kW. This should be pretty easy to test once the site goes live.
 
Stopped by this morning at about 9:30AM after I got off duty to see what was happening. Nothing. No crew. Not operational. All screens dark. All dispensers are labeled "Hyperfast upto 350 kW". I'll check back again later today or tomorrow.
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I think this will be going live soon. Just stopped by and the tech was working on the getting the screens setup. 2 were on and 2 were still the windows screen. I didn't want to bother him, so I didn't ask when. I imagine later tonight or tomorrow this will be up.
 
henchman24 said:
I think this will be going live soon. Just stopped by and the tech was working on the getting the screens setup. 2 were on and 2 were still the windows screen. I didn't want to bother him, so I didn't ask when. I imagine later tonight or tomorrow this will be up.
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What's a few more days?

It took the utility company over a year to hook up the site.
 
I went by this afternoon around 4:30 PM and the electrician was programming and commissioning the credit card readers on the last 2 charging stations.



He tests each one by activating it fir his company's e-Lighting F150 by the app, the credit card, and a third method to make sure it is functioning properly. Once all 4 are done, Electrify America will shut down the station overnight and likely make it live tomorrow.



While he was doing this, I was able to connect and charge my Tesla using an adapter (the car is CCS1 enabled). I used a credit card to pay for charging. I was at 55% and it's peak charge was 104kW, which is actually better than what I get from a Supercharger at that State of Charge. The charge was $0.37/min +tax, which is about the same cost as Supercharging two blocks away.



Hopefully, it will show live in the E.A. app tomorrow. I want to welcome all the CCS1 charging vehicles to Cheyenne. It will be great to see you having DCFC charging here finally.



I've attached a link to my YouTube of charging there today so you can see it's real.



One more thing I learned about this station from him, it was built for expansion upto 4 more chargers if the usage demonstrates the need for it. The conduit is all already in place. They can drop in and commission more chargers any time they choose to do so.



Thank you for choosing to #DriveElectric




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I stopped by at 4PM all are offline. I called E.A. and they report "critical unexpected outage". No idea when it will be fixed but "it's a priority", whatever that actually means. 20230831_155241.jpg
 
I’ll have to check it out tomorrow! My car is at 50% so won’t pull huge numbers, but I’ll report back.

Of note, 1 and 3 are the balanced chargers.
 
Worked for me this morning. I didn't precondition my car and it was sitting at 55% so I didn't pull high speeds (85kW), but started and charged with no issue. It charged me for the 90-350 pricing even though I didn't pull over 90, but not gonna fret about that.
 
I drove up last night, peaked my Ioniq 5 at 235 kW. Station 2 kicked me off at 75% charge for some weird reason, but whatever. Great to know it's working!
 
henchman24 said:
Worked for me this morning. I didn't precondition my car and it was sitting at 55% so I didn't pull high speeds (85kW), but started and charged with no issue. It charged me for the 90-350 pricing even though I didn't pull over 90, but not gonna fret about that.
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My understanding is that the pricing is based on the maximum your vehicle can do rather than what is actually delivered. In my experience, our Bolts have always gotten the lower rate while our Mach E always gets the higher one (regardless of what we're pulling).
 
Price is divided into two tiers. I'm charging our 2018 CCS1 upgraded Tesla Model X100D and it is charging at 152kW at 27% SOC. 1-193 kW is $0.37/min. 1-90 kW is $0.19/min. See picture.20230902_184355.jpg20230831_155251.jpg
 
I would be interested in seeing what you actually get charged for your session. I just reviewed our last 8 charges in price/minute states (NE, WY, MT: Ogalla, Lexington, Lincoln, Grand Island, Ogallala, Rawlins, Butte, Missoula). In nearly every case we went to 80% SOC (where our Mach E is always pulling under 80 kW), and in a couple we went to 81% (where our Mach E drops to 40 kW). For all 8 of these we were charged at our initial rate ($0.29/min, Pass+ pricing) throughout, even though we spend a good percentage of the time pulling <90 kW.

I had assumed based on screens like what you've shown that the price would drop once our car was taking under 90 kW, but that has proven not to be the case in our experience. I would be pleased if that were to be changing, since that way the customer doesn't get penalized as much when a charger isn't performing as expected.
 
SRL said:
I would be interested in seeing what you actually get charged for your session. I just reviewed our last 8 charges in price/minute states (NE, WY, MT: Ogalla, Lexington, Lincoln, Grand Island, Ogallala, Rawlins, Butte, Missoula). In nearly every case we went to 80% SOC (where our Mach E is always pulling under 80 kW), and in a couple we went to 81% (where our Mach E drops to 40 kW). For all 8 of these we were charged at our initial rate ($0.29/min, Pass+ pricing) throughout, even though we spend a good percentage of the time pulling <90 kW.

I had assumed based on screens like what you've shown that the price would drop once our car was taking under 90 kW, but that has proven not to be the case in our experience. I would be pleased if that were to be changing, since that way the customer doesn't get penalized as much when a charger isn't performing as expected.
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It appears that E.A. charges a rate based on the start of your charging session. It did not drop even after charging was below 90kW. It continued at $0.37/minute for the entire session. Despite that, it worked out to about $0.25/kWh which is less than the $0.38/kWh at the Tesla Supercharger. Generally, I don't use either unless I'm traveling. I charge mostly at home from wind turbines and solar arrays on our property, so we charge most of the time for free with pure zero emissions electrons.

Here's a link to a video showing our system:

We are listed on Plugshare.com in case anyone runs short of getting to a public charging station.

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