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ty-web asked

EV Charge station - Min Charge.

Hi, I have an offgrid Victron system, (3 x 48/5000 (conf parallel), Cerbo GX, 50kw LFP batteries, 9kw DC solar and 8kw Fronius AC coupled Solar.) and today I installed the Victron EV charger. I updated the Firmware to V1.29.

Note. By the time I finished the sun was gone. So below is my understanding from reading the manual, trying to set it up ready for the new day.

In Auto it uses Solar, my understanding is it then stops charging once there is not enough solar. Which is fine. I anticipated it would be similar to the Myenergy Zappi I removed. In that it charges from solar whilst available then stops, and will finish charging according to scheduled times if charging is not complete. If this is the case how do I enable this function there does not appear to be a method.

Example, Wife gets home at 3:30pm from work, plugs in the Tesla, it charges for 1 or more hours (time of year dependent, currently winter in Ozz) then stops. But at a predetermined time id like it to resume until the Tesla stops taking charge. I want to be able to replace what the car used in the days travel.

I have home assistant, so if it can't be done automatically by the EV charger, can home assistant change the selected function "Manual / Auto / schedule". Thus I can set a timer in HA to switch modes at say 9:30pm at night when the usage is dropping off, and thus the car charges when the house load is low, providing the Soc is above 50%.

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ty-web answered ·

Ok More data, now as I have two days of Sun use to go by. So Yesterday during the day as soon as the battery hit 71% (EV charger set to allow Auto charge when SOC above 70%) it worked a treat, came online and consumed all the excess solar.

This afternoon, when my wife came home, the batteries had been 100% for a couple of hours, and the Fronius Solar Inverters were being throttled by the Multiplus II using the frequency. The EV wouldn't charge the LED's indicated waiting for excess solar. This didn't change and after about 10 minutes, I intervened and kicked off a manual charge which reduced the throttling, I then flicked it back to Auto. where it currently is charging at min rates as the solar is dropping off.

This does not seem correct, the EV charger is connected via Modbus to the Cerbo GX, I can see it in VRM transmitting data through the Cerbo so coms is good. Id expect that when the EV is plugged in and the Solar is being throttled, that the EV charger would come on at min (6a) and ramp up to match available solar. Am I missing some thing? I switched from the Zappi tot he Victron so It would all integrate and play nice, but this is not working and Zappi was actually better as it would start charging causing the Multi to un-throttle the Fronius AC coupled Solar. Would appear the Cerbo / Ev charger are not communicating properly or I have a setting wrong some where.

Any guidance greatly appreciated.


System : Full offfgrid, 2 x M2's 48/5000, 8kw Fronius Solar, 4kw 450/100 MPPT solar, 50kw LFP batteries, Cerbo GX.

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falkon avatar image falkon commented ·

Hi, I had the same observation, unfortunately :-(

There seems to be some "imperfection" in the EVCS firmware for the Auto mode.

I tried to formulate it clearly in this post -- hopefully, someone from Victron can have a look at it. The suggested solution can be easily implemented in the Node-Red on Cerbo, but it would be way better if it would become a standard firmware feature of the Auto mode.

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