Limiting Power Draw when using OCPP

[egilroy-netzero]

Hello:

I have experimented using your charge on solar feature for my Chevy Bolt + Ford Lightning but it requires the vehicle to be plugged in for that to "work". If I am not home during the solar production hours, it isn't too useful. But I love the idea!!! I have a pair of Tesla Powerwall 3's and don't want to drain them. I have an 18 KW solar system so I generate quite a bit of excess power that I send to the grid (NEM 1.) here in Florida (Duke Power does 1:1 Net Metering).

What might be good for a future enhancement, because your application seems to have access to this data, is to allow a setting to OCPP charge starting at a particular time (let's say after my evening high cost TOU energy period at 9PM) AND allow the charging to stop based upon the total excess KW exported for that day to the grid. This it would seem to be a cool way of getting the advantages of charge on solar and allow for time "shifting" of the excess.

This is kind of what I do now but manually when I get home in the evening but to be honest I suck at it!! The Lightning has a 131 KWh battery pack so if I get distracted and forget to turn it off, it drains my battery (27 KWh) and pulls all the rest from the grid. The Bolt has a 66KWh battery pack BUT the OCPP enabled charger, with charge on solar enabled, I have does not work with the Bolt because the Bolt gets upset if when the power supplied at any point drops to zero, it just ends the charge session. I have looked at your automation options to prevent my battery getting drained but that is just one of my issues.

I think you have an awesome product and any suggestions you have would be great.

Thanks, Ed

[zigam]

Thanks for the feedback!

To prevent Powerwall from discharging when charging an EV, you can configure automations:
https://docs.netzero.energy/docs/tesla/Automation#ev-charging-without-discharging-the-powerwall

This can be done in addition to using charge on solar -- it doesn't matter when charging on solar, since Powerwall will not discharge, but matters overnight when charging from the grid.

There is also an option in charge on solar to keep charging when solar production is low. This will prevent the issue with your Bolt getting upset (it will continue charging from the grid at low charge rate when clouds are passing by).