Has Gen 3 Charger become smarter?

[evpaddie]

Over on the Facebook Tesla site, a prospective Model 3 buyer visiting the Richmond sales rooms was informed...

"We asked the sales rep about home charging options as we want to be able to use our solar system to charge the car. She was very helpful and informed us that you can program the Tesla Wall Connector to only charge the car when your solar system is in excess as opposed to feeding it back to the grid."

Can the Gen 3 Charger do this?

 

[ChrisW67]

I could be missing something, but nothing I have seen on the web site or in their installation material indicates that the Wall Connector has the requisite sensors to measure when the solar is in excess. It may be possible to limit active hours to when you expect the solar will be in excess (either at the connector or the car).

 

[FlyingKiwi]

Well, they haven't updated the install manuals yet if it has. (checked US and AU manuals)

There are ways to achieve this with home automation and the Tesla API for the car (limit charging current and start/stop charging via the API), so long as you have a way to sense the excess solar production. Or there are of course other EVSE that have this feature, but they seem to cost twice what the wall connector does. And sooner or later someone is going to figure out the wall connector powersharing feature comms protocol and develop a module that will achieve the same thing.

 

[Blaq]

Over on the Facebook Tesla site, a prospective Model 3 buyer visiting the Richmond sales rooms was informed...

"We asked the sales rep about home charging options as we want to be able to use our solar system to charge the car. She was very helpful and informed us that you can program the Tesla Wall Connector to only charge the car when your solar system is in excess as opposed to feeding it back to the grid."

Can the Gen 3 Charger do this?

The Tesla Gen 3 wall connector can't automatically do this. The charge point needs extra smarts to be able to monitor the output from the solar inverter, compare that to the total house usage and then automatically adjust the charge rate into the car accordingly. There is one on the market that can do it called a Zappi but it's way more expensive than the Tesla charger. I did the sums and in my situation, what I was missing out on in solar feed in tarrif compared to my standard electricity usage rate, the extra cost of the charger just didn't stack up. If I do plan on charging from solar I'd set the car's schedule to charge from say 10:00 am when solar is ramping up, and limit the amps so that it's ingesting close to what the solar is producing. That may be what the sales rep was referring to.

 

[Onshore]

Over on the Facebook Tesla site, a prospective Model 3 buyer visiting the Richmond sales rooms was informed...
Can the Gen 3 Charger do this?

Given its Facebook, there may be some crossed wires in the comprehension or retelling of the showroom discussion, but they may have been alluding to ChargeHQ

This is 3rd party software that essentially achieves this. There’s a thread on here somewhere

EV Charging from Home Solar

Start charging your EV from your home solar panels with a 60-day free trial. Works with popular solar inverters + Tesla EVs or compatible smart chargers.

chargehq.net

 

[Blaq]

Given its Facebook, there may be some crossed wires in the comprehension or retelling of the showroom discussion, but they may have been alluding to ChargeHQ

This is 3rd party software that essentially achieves this. There’s a thread on here somewhere

EV Charging from Home Solar

Start charging your EV from your home solar panels with a 60-day free trial. Works with popular solar inverters + Tesla EVs or compatible smart chargers.

chargehq.net

Haven't heard of Charge HQ, I'll go check it out.

 

[evpaddie]

Given its Facebook, there may be some crossed wires in the comprehension or retelling of the showroom discussion, but they may have been alluding to ChargeHQ

This is 3rd party software that essentially achieves this. There’s a thread on here somewhere

EV Charging from Home Solar

Start charging your EV from your home solar panels with a 60-day free trial. Works with popular solar inverters + Tesla EVs or compatible smart chargers.

chargehq.net

Yes, it may have been a misunderstanding. I have looked at ChargeHQ previously and may consider it in the future, although we often make a manual decision on whether to charge the car, or alter its charting rate, or charge the PW2 depending our driving plans for next days, current solar generation and weather forecasts.

 

[positiv]

Keep in mind that for that sort of functionality your inverter needs to be compatible with ChargeHQ. One workaround is to install an energy monitor.

 

[Vostok]

There are ways to achieve this with home automation and the Tesla API for the car (limit charging current and start/stop charging via the API), so long as you have a way to sense the excess solar production.

Exactly. If you have a Tesla vehicle and Tesla Powerwall, the API provides all the information you need to be able to intelligently charge your vehicle from excess solar. And if you don‘t have a Powerwall but do have a solar inverter that has its own API (e.g. SolarEdge) then you could still write your own App to do it.

However actually doing that might incur the wrath of Tesla since while they ‘tolerate’ third party apps using their API on an ad-hoc basis, regular periodic queries to the API could get you blocked, and Tesla has been known to change API security mechanisms and how the API works, which then breaks these Apps.

All Tesla API documentation is unofficial and has been reverse engineered by geek end users decompiling the Tesla Android App. Explore at your own risk.

 

[Pixor]

I’ve been using Charge HQ for a few months, and it does exactly what it says. The Tesla charger, however is not part of any smarts. I track my Fronius inverter generation and home consumption using a cloud system called Solar Analytics. Charge HQ reads this data and uses the Tesla API to control how much charge my Tesla model 3 demands from the wall box (I.e. the spare solar power that would otherwise go back to the grid).

Charge HQ can read from a number of systems/inverters. You can also override the solar control from the app if you want it to charge from the grid.

 

[Vostok]

I’ve been using Charge HQ for a few months, and it does exactly what it says. The Tesla charger, however is not part of any smarts. I track my Fronius inverter generation and home consumption using a cloud system called Solar Analytics. Charge HQ reads this data and uses the Tesla API to control how much charge my Tesla model 3 demands from the wall box (I.e. the spare solar power that would otherwise go back to the grid).

I'd be interested to know how frequently Charge HQ polls the inverter and then how frequently it tells the car to start or stop charging or change the charge rate. I also wonder if it changes the IP address of the API queries on a frequent basis to sidestep IP blocking.

Apps running on mobile phones don't encounter this issue because the IP address of the mobile device frequently changes (when on the mobile network, not WiFi). But an app running on a 24/7 server ('the cloud') is a different beast.

 

[Pixor]

Search for ChargeHQ on Facebook - that’s the official support group. It’s in beta at the moment, so you need to ask to be added to the service.

The web site and FAQ are here - Charge HQ - EV Smart Charging App .

 

[OzVic]

I'd be interested to know how frequently Charge HQ polls the inverter and then how frequently it tells the car to start or stop charging or change the charge rate. I also wonder if it changes the IP address of the API queries on a frequent basis to sidestep IP blocking.

Apps running on mobile phones don't encounter this issue because the IP address of the mobile device frequently changes (when on the mobile network, not WiFi). But an app running on a 24/7 server ('the cloud') is a different beast.

1. It depends on the inverter and how often the manufacturer allows their API to be polled (cloud). They do everything legit and request permissions from the manufacturers. I believe some were/are polling at around 5 minutes. One manufacturer is allowing them to trial 1-2 minutes.

2. Charge HQ also allows you to push the values yourself. I do this for my Enphase system as they aren't directly supported by Charge HQ mainly because Enphase are asking the developer ridiculous prices for access to their cloud API. As I can read these values locally for free I just push them up every 30 seconds with a simple script running on my router.

Charge HQ will change the amps up and down every 30 seconds for me (no wear and tear for this). It will try to minimise wear on contactors by not fully turning it off for a set period of time (6m) if there is too low solar or high energy usage (eg. intermittent clouds or kettle is boiling).

 

[evKane77]

@OzVic Wondered if you can please give me some tips or point me towards a guide on how you access your live local enphase data and push it to ChargeHQ to make the most of excess solar production.

I have 10kW enphase solar system, a Model 3 est delivery late 2022 and a decision to make about which charger to install.

Thanks in advance

 

[Blaq]

@OzVic Wondered if you can please give me some tips or point me towards a guide on how you access your live local enphase data and push it to ChargeHQ to make the most of excess solar production.

I have 10kW enphase solar system, a Model 3 est delivery late 2022 and a decision to make about which charger to install.

Thanks in advance

Solar Inverter Support Register

No looking good I'm afraid.... Quote from their site;

You may need to go with a smart wall connector like the Zappi if you want Solar integration.

 

[OzVic]

@OzVic Wondered if you can please give me some tips or point me towards a guide on how you access your live local enphase data and push it to ChargeHQ to make the most of excess solar production.

I have 10kW enphase solar system, a Model 3 est delivery late 2022 and a decision to make about which charger to install.

Thanks in advance

Try:

Bash: GitHub - NewyGuy/ChargeHQ: Bash script to push Envoy values to ChargeHQ API

or

Python: GitHub - pgroom/ChargeHQ

You will also need to request access to the Push API from the developer (Jay)

The above will work as long as you can get JSON formatted live values from your Envoy.

http://envoy/production.json

 

[bgrigoriu]

1. It depends on the inverter and how often the manufacturer allows their API to be polled (cloud). They do everything legit and request permissions from the manufacturers. I believe some were/are polling at around 5 minutes. One manufacturer is allowing them to trial 1-2 minutes.

2. Charge HQ also allows you to push the values yourself. I do this for my Enphase system as they aren't directly supported by Charge HQ mainly because Enphase are asking the developer ridiculous prices for access to their cloud API. As I can read these values locally for free I just push them up every 30 seconds with a simple script running on my router.

Charge HQ will change the amps up and down every 30 seconds for me (no wear and tear for this). It will try to minimise wear on contactors by not fully turning it off for a set period of time (6m) if there is too low solar or high energy usage (eg. intermittent clouds or kettle is boiling).

Hi, I have a similar instalation as yours . Can you give me more details on how you push the data from enphase to Charge HQ ? I am able to get a continous flow from the S metered but not more

 

[OzVic]

Hi, I have a similar instalation as yours . Can you give me more details on how you push the data from enphase to Charge HQ ? I am able to get a continous flow from the S metered but not more

I use the bash script mentioned a post or two above. You will first need to sign up to ChargeHQ and then contact the developer requesting access to the push API.

Technical details once you've done the above and if you're having issues, I may be able to help if you pm me.