Is that limitation of requirement for a separate meter for controlled load because of the main being 3-phase and controlled being 1-phase or is this something about regulations in SA?
I don't know, I am sure there are 3 phase meters available that do 3 phase controlled load, but SA Power just seems to do it with a separate meter. Couldn't tell you why.
Just to finish this one off, thomasw is correct, SA Power Networks have presented at the Australian Electric Vehicle Association a number of times, and EV charging is an allowed load for Controlled Load (now revised upto 32 Amps for the EV charging). To get it installed, get your electrician to install a Controlled Load Isolator Circuit Breaker in the meter box. Most will refer to it as a J Tariff Isolator. The electrician should leave a "tail" on it. Then SA Power Networks comes and connects the tail into the meter, reprograms the meter to include the new controlled load tariff, and sends the details back into the system for the retailer. When discussing this with your retailer, sometimes its easier to say you want to have a J tariff. Most of the newer meters can have this extra tariff programmed in. Note it does get a bit more complex if SA Power Networks do not own the meter.
To to be clear - 32A per phase, so you can run 3 phase and draw only about 15A per phase to charge a Model 3 at full rate.
Do you know if the controlled load time change be changed remotely on a smart meter? As in adding the 10am-3pm solar sink time? or do they have to come out?
No problem. Ill write up a parts list. If you have some IT and basic electronics skills its not too difficult. It does take up a bit of space in the meter box so I built up a second one for the sparky to wire in to the main one.
I have run my own IT Business for 20 years, and always dabbled in electronics too. Would love it if you can't send me some basic details of what you are using, don't need to spend ages on full details.
I'm not sure in the end if it is worth it for me. I'll be able to charge the car at full 11kw 11pm-7am and 10am-3pm, so more than half to the day. And I don't do long trips much. So I doubt I'll ever really need to charge from peak power. But I'm interested anyway in what you've got and what else it does with monitoring. I've got some potential issues though with things like this because my meter box is away from my house, about to be mounted on a shed and the car will be in there. But the house is separate with its own circuit box. So means monitoring everything properly requires doing it at both locations.
Or if you already have J Tariff / controlled load installed then the EV charger needs to be wired in with a changeover switch (either hot water or EV) apparently. I already have 3 phase solar with a not so smart meter (cost me about $800), plus controlled load with an old disk meter.
Given that its up to the end user to switch between the controlled load "loads" I dont understand how people will do this unless it is online / computer controlled (as mine will be). Forget to switch back from car charging = no water heating!
I have not seen a requirement to run a changeover switch, nothing in the SA power docuentnation about it being a requirement, but jsut that you can't run two at once. I have just install a 16A sonoff wifi switch on my hot water, to schedule it and monitor usage. I am probably thinking I'll run it during the day in the 10am-3pm controlled load time only, and charge the car at night. Or maybe even car from 11pm-4am would probably be plenty 99% of the time, and HW from 4am-7am.
But yes, you are right that without getting a little tricky like this it is hard for most people to run a EV and HW on controlled load. Even getting a Australian certified wifi switch that will cope with a HW heater is hard, sonoff was the only one I could find.
The only easy way for most people that I can think of would be to run 3 phase controlled load with HW on one phase, and EV on another (or maybe both of the other two phases, but as I've said before that probably won't work), but that means limiting your EV charging to about 7kw.
![[Zombie]](/tmc/data/avatars/s/236/236453.jpg?1658216431){kind=avatar}