When we talk about a location's power data, we're effectively talking about how long it takes to charge a vehicle there. Generally, the more kilowatts (kW) a charger boasts, the faster it will charge your vehicle. Time spent charging is a huge factor in our community's decisions on where to charge, so we've been working to acquire and verify power level data of charging locations on the PlugShare map. With this data, we've added a few ways for users to determine what to expect at any location:
| Note: You will not see these details if power data has not yet been verified in your region. We continue to work with international networks to access more official feeds, so we will continue rolling this out to other regions as we obtain the necessary power data information for charging locations around the world. |
Viewing location power data
At a glance on a location view, you'll see the power levels at the top. If there's more than one plug with power data, it will display a kW range for the location:
When reviewing the "Plugs" section, you can see the breakdown of power levels by plug type:
When you select More Details, you will see the power levels of individual plugs:
Minimum Power filters
Depending on your vehicle and your region, you'll see the option to filter for locations with minimum power. This filter will narrow results on the PlugShare map to locations which maintain the minimum power you want to use for charging.
Requirements for the Minimum Power filter to appear:
- Set your Region to US, Canada, or Australia
- To adjust your Region, update it from your account settings
- Ensure you have a vehicle eligible for fast charging
- We currently support Power filtering on Level 3 plugs. Vehicles with a Level 3 plug type will work with chargers like Supercharger, CCS/SAE, or CHAdeMO
| Note: Power filters are currently only available for Level 3 plugs. If we expand to include Level 2 plugs in power filters, we will be sure to let all of our users know! |
Important tips for using Minimum Power filters:
- When you set a Minimum Power filter, you will only see locations on the map which meet the minimum requirements.
- Example: If you set it 50 kW, there will be stations at 50, 70, 100, 120, 200
- The breakpoints [0, 50, 70, 120, 200] are based on the most common levels of power in our charging data. However, there is slight flexibility to this:
- Example: the 50 breakpoint will show chargers with 48 kW power.
If a location has no power data, it will be filtered out!
While Power Filters may be a useful tool, you may still want to check areas without using it. We try to provide the best quality data available in the PlugShare map, however many stations do not contain complete information as our community adds new locations every day. Especially in sparsely populated areas, you may end up finding what you need actually exists there!