EV Charging Station modes limitations

Question

question

bulmonoss asked Jan 25, '23

EV Charging Station modes limitations

Hello,

I want to share a few considerations about the EV Charging Station integrated into an ESS (*) Victron system:

- In some specific situations the Manual and Automatic mode are not enough open to manage the charge according to the user needs, especially in partly cloudy days.

In Automatic mode there must be options to choose which should be the priority for the solar production, for example:

Charge first the ESS battery or EV battery.
Charge the ESS battery first, until a certain % of SOC, then charge the EV battery.
Charge botch batteries at the same time, using a certain % of the solar production (adjustable by the end user) to charge the EV battery and the rest to charge the ESS battery.

A new Semi-Automatic mode, should be implemented, for the situation that you want to charge the car with the surplus solar production, but you want to charge the car anyway, could be something like this:

Once it has started to charge, if the clouds appear and there is no surplus power, the charge is limited to 6A or more (adjustable by the end user), with a timer limit (also adjustable by the end user) if the sun doesn’t come back to really shut it down.
In this mode the priority should be to charge the EV battery.
The ESS battery should never be used to charge the EV battery.

- The communication between the EV Charger and the Cerbo GX is non reliable despite the wifi signal is strong, sometimes work, sometime doesn’t.

Furthermore, If the router is reset, both the EV charger and the GX reconnect to the wifi, but the EV Charger usually doesn’t reconnect with the GX. Before setting static IPs to both, the EV Charger never reconnected to the GX, with static IPs it seldom (randomly) reconnected.

Could be great to allow a RJ45 data connection for the charger (or via VE direct), selling a hardware upgrade to who already owns the EV Charging Station, and adding it to future batches.

- The screen is very unresponsive.

Does anyone know if the Victron development team is working to make some of these improvements?

Thanks for reading.

* The ESS system consist in a Huawei Sun2000 5kW inverter in AC coupling, Multiplus II 8000, Pylontech battery, Cerbo GX (v2.92) and EV Charging Station (1.23).

ev charging station

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Lucian Popescu (Victron Energy Staff) ♦♦ commented · Jan 25, 2023 at 07:22 AM

Hi, at the moment, the charging station is charging only when it detects excess power going into the grid. So the ESS priority remains the same - charging the backup batteries first.

Regarding the connection between EVCS and GX device, that sound like a networking issue, try to configure your router to assign the same IP address to each device all the time. Otherwise, you will have to reconfigure on each device what's the IP of the other one for having communication between them.
Regarding the screen, can you send me a video to understand what do you mean by unresponsive?

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bulmonoss Lucian Popescu (Victron Energy Staff) ♦♦ commented · Jan 26, 2023 at 11:17 AM

Hi Lucian, thanks for your advice.

- My thoughts about the charging modes are caused because in an ESS all is about energy management, and the EV charger is a main vector into it. With the actual Manual and Automatic modes there are many reasonable energy flow scenarios that are absolutely not covered.

The Victron EV Charging Station has remarkable “surplus” price compared to many options from another brands, and its main advantage is supposed to be to have fully integration (free of trouble) into a Victron system, having the options needed to use it according to as many energy management scenarios as possible.

- I already have static IPs assigned to the GX and the charger and the connection trouble is not between them and the router, both connect seamlessly to it. Is something between the Cerbo and the charger.

Now in the GX settings, into “Modbus TCP services” the charger appears, into “Modbus TCP devices” the charger appears too with its static IP, but in the “Device List” says “EVCS-HQ…. Not Connected”, it’s like the GX just sometimes recognize the EV Charging Station. Looking for devices via VRM says that the EV charger is: “Last seen 3 days ago”.

Using the IP of the GX to access it directly with the web browser works always ideally.

With the EV charger is not that solid, despite being connected to the router (appears as Espressif), the access via browser with its IP just works sometimes / rarely...

- About the screen random responsiveness, I will send you a video.

Thanks again.

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s-forsberg bulmonoss commented · Jan 26, 2023 at 11:36 AM

If the connectivity seems unstable, you can try setting Wifi scan period to 0, see this post for details:

https://community.victronenergy.com/questions/160186/bug-report-victron-ev-charger-unreachable-at-times.html

/Sven

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bulmonoss s-forsberg commented · Jan 27, 2023 at 06:24 AM

Thanks Sven,

I’ve put the wifi scan period to 0 but it kept having troubles connecting to the GX, I’ve reset the router, the EV Charging Station, and still not connecting.

The charger always connects to the router at first attempt (appears as Espressif, ESP32 I guess), but rarely connects to the Cerbo GX. Last days it’s been also unreachable through web browser with its IP (already static). The only way to access to it is to turn off the router, then the charger activates its access point and becomes reachable with the browser.

Yesterday there was something new, the car had 58% of battery, I tried to charge it in Manual mode and it didn’t work. I plug the car and the charge never started, inside the car drawing of the charger screen said “Low SOC”. I retried a few times unsuccessfully. Then I tried the “CP Calibration” in settings, said that calibrated successfully, retried and it kept without charging. After all that I tried another charger and the car started charging immediately.

I’ve had the EV Charging Station for almost three months and it never functioned consistently.

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Lucian Popescu (Victron Energy Staff) ♦♦ bulmonoss commented · Jan 27, 2023 at 01:56 PM

Low SOC is not vehicle related, that means the charging station can't read the SOC of your backup system. Can you email me with your VRM portal ID, so I can have a look at your system?

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bulmonoss Lucian Popescu (Victron Energy Staff) ♦♦ commented · Jan 27, 2023 at 04:03 PM

Hi Lucian,

I’m definitely missing something, I tried to charge the car in Manual mode, the charger didn’t communicate with the GX so said battery 0%, grid 0,0 kW, AC Loads 0,0 kW, when none of this was true, the ESS battery was at 30% (Active SOC limit, the Minimum SOC is set at 20%). So it said Low SOC and the car didn’t start charging.

But anyway, in Manual mode none of this should matter, because the charge is supposed to be operated manually by the user.

I’ll email you the VRM portal ID.

Thanks.

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20230126-162700.jpg (3.0 MiB)

Lucian Popescu (Victron Energy Staff) ♦♦ bulmonoss commented · Jan 27, 2023 at 08:25 PM

Hi, make sure you follow all the steps from the manual:

https://www.victronenergy.com/upload/documents/EV_Charging_Station/EV_Charging_Station-en.pdf

Is the modbus TCP service enabled on the GX side?

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1674851103791.png (98.5 KiB)

bulmonoss Lucian Popescu (Victron Energy Staff) ♦♦ commented · Jan 28, 2023 at 10:29 AM

Hi, the steps were followed, when set the GX on the charger the IP is the GX one: The modbus TCP service is enabled on the GX, and the charger appears. None of this has changed.

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s-forsberg bulmonoss commented · Jan 27, 2023 at 09:34 PM

Since you cannot reach the unit through your web browser, I have one idea!

Try to make sure that the Wifi network's SSID is only available through 2.4 GHz, either by naming the two networks differently, or by turning off 5GHz completely.

The charger only supports 2.4 GHz.

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bulmonoss s-forsberg commented · Jan 28, 2023 at 10:42 AM

Hi, the router generates two wifis, a 2.4GHz and a 5GHz, having each one a different name, the GX and the charger are connected to the 2,4GHz one. I dont have access to fully turn off the 5GHz one.

I've turned off the router, accessed the charger with it's acces point, deactivated the wifi with the "use" marker on the charger, applied the new settings, turned on again the router and the charger reconnected inmediatly to the wifi (IP charger found with Fing app) when it wasn't supposed to, being also unreacheable via browser when connected to the router...

I'll do a factory reset and start again from the beginning.

Thanks

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bulmonoss bulmonoss commented · Feb 02, 2023 at 09:48 AM

Finally, I did not do the factory reset, I tried another thing before:

I bought a wifi access point (Unifi Ubiquiti) and connected the EV charger (same parameters as before) to it, with everything else at home, Cerbo GX included, still connected to the router (TP-Link).

It has worked flawlessly for the last four days, with a rock solid connection between GX and charger. Now the ping of the charger is ok and is also reachable via browser.

Maybe there is some kind of incompatibility between the EV charger and this brand of routers.

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bulmonoss bulmonoss commented · Feb 02, 2023 at 10:14 AM

Going back to the main reason why I opened this question, which is the limitations of the actual Manual and Automatic modes.

I proposed a few added options for the Automatic mode, and also a new Semi-Automatic mode but, anyway, I’ve just seen that Huawei, a brand that’s definitely known for how closed are their PV solutions, has released an EV charger that, when working into a Huawei ESS system, has a mode called “PV Power Preferred” that is almost exactly the Semi-Automatic mode I proposed! This is the mode description:

PV Power Preferred.JPG

I really hope that Victron, which is known for its quality and how open are their systems, maybe consider to implement through firmware update some new options / modes like that in the future.

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pv-power-preferred.jpg (121.9 KiB)

pwacquiez bulmonoss commented · Feb 02, 2023 at 11:23 PM

I hope too. For my part, I am waiting for updates from the EVSC for OFF GRID systems. In particular, optimize the surplus and avoid overloading.

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Lucian Popescu (Victron Energy Staff) ♦♦ bulmonoss commented · Feb 02, 2023 at 10:38 AM

Hi, yes, thanks for the example, a new Automatic algorithm is under development.

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s-forsberg bulmonoss commented · Feb 02, 2023 at 05:19 PM

Obviously, there is. I got it working with Asus after some fiddling around with the settings. Some basics are

1 Try Legacy mode for 2.4 GHz
2 Make sure Wifi 6 is not used ( 802.11/b/g/n/ax )
3 Disabling airtime fairness
4 Disabling WMM APSD
5 Disable Tx bursting

//Sven

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Lucian Popescu (Victron Energy Staff) ♦♦ s-forsberg commented · Feb 02, 2023 at 05:35 PM

So there is no issue with the device, just on the AP side some fine-tuning was needed. I'm glad you solved it, Sven! Maybe you can edit your message above and add the router model, so if somebody else has the same issue, to find the solution easier.

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nuxland Lucian Popescu (Victron Energy Staff) ♦♦ commented · Feb 02, 2023 at 06:40 PM

This is not a solution (to disable features).

I want to use 5Ghz and also Wifi6 with other devices connected to my ASUS AiMesh network (consist of 5 separate devices in different locations in the house and yard).

So I just installed a new separate WiFi AP (only 2,4Ghz and only 802.11/g and different SSID) for EV Station only:)

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ponzoa nuxland commented · Sep 08, 2023 at 09:13 AM

5GHz has a faster throughput but a lot less range than 2.4GHz wifi. The higher the frequency, the shorter the range. For the amount of data needed, 2.4GHz is more than enough but the important factor is you ensure better reception and hence, better communication.

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Lucian Popescu (Victron Energy Staff) ♦♦ nuxland commented · Feb 02, 2023 at 07:51 PM

That is a solution also :)

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Modifications Space

Node Red Space

Answer 1 · 2023-01-25T09:03:54Z

s-forsberg answered · Jan 25, 2023 at 09:03 AM

It seems like the charger needs to know a static IP address for the Cerbo. So at least, the Cerbo should have a static address.

If you feel like doing it, you could download PingPlotter to test the connection to the charging station, this will reveal if you have networking issues.

https://www.pingplotter.com/download

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Answer 2 · 2023-04-21T08:10:16Z

motylu answered · Apr 21, 2023 at 08:10 AM

Hello guys and especially @Lucian Popescu (Victron Energy Staff) !

I also have Victron EV charging station along with 3 Multis, 3 MPPTs and Cerbo GX. I have EV Renault Zoe and I made simple switching between 1-phase nad 3-phase charging using mechanical 2-pole disconnector. Because I am from Czech Republic, I have set the ESS phase regulation to "Individual phase", because measuring in the CZ is done independently on each phase, not as sum of all phases like in the other countries, and this is the reason of my questions/feature requests.

Do you plan some additional feature for system with EV charging station, if the ESS is set to "individual phase regulation"? At this moment if I charge the EV using 1-phase charging in automatic mode and power from PV is for example 6 kW and charging current is set to 11 A, in normal state everything is good - EV is charging throw Multi on L1 by approx. 2.5 kW and additional power from PV (3.5 kW) id feeding back to grid throw Multis on L2 and L3. But if some device on phase L1 in the home installation is switched on (for example 2 kW power), then this device is basically powered from grid (due to power limitation of Multi on L1), but charging is still continues, because SW implementation probably calculates sum of all phases and indicates feeding back 1.5 kW to grid (L1: +2 kW, L2: -1.75 kW, L3: -1.75 kW => -1.5 kW). But in the CZ my bill indicates 3.5 kW to grid and 2 kW from grid (of course for higher cost than feeding) :--) . So now I will add one Multi in phase L1 to increase power limitation - I know, that this solution is not officially supported, but I have tested it on another installation, and it is functional without problem. But the problem with calculation will be the same, only with higher power limitation on L1...

Of course another good feature would be, if the EV charging station (in manual/scheduled mode) will take account actual power consumption of whole home installation (it is of course known in the system) and limit actual charging current to not exceed maximal reserved power from the grid by the energy distributor (basically defined by main circuit breaker). This is very common feature in other wallboxes and it is requested feature for granted installation in the Czech Republic.

And the final good feature would be some parameter, available throw MQTT/Modbus/NodeRED in the Cerbo GX, for blocking EV charging station from charging (regardless selected mode). Because in the Czech Republic energy distributor must have option to disable EV charging remotely. Of course this could be done by external disconnector, but is it not convenient and best solution. It will be nice, if there will be SW option to disable/enable charging throw Cerbo GX - direct use of digital input state or using NodeRED according to actual digital input state or some another solution...

Thank you very much for your info!

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Lucian Popescu (Victron Energy Staff) ♦♦ commented · Apr 21, 2023 at 10:50 AM

Yes, integration with ESS will be increased. Your second request – the power consumption for the rest of the system to be considered – yes, that coming. Third request, a parameter to block the device, we don't have that, it was not requested, but we can add it on the to-do list, it shouldn't be complicated.

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motylu Lucian Popescu (Victron Energy Staff) ♦♦ commented · Apr 21, 2023 at 11:58 AM

Thank you very much again for your prompt answers @Lucian Popescu (Victron Energy Staff) !

Good to hear, that next features coming...

According to the third request, I don't know the better solution now, because using external contactor is not good solution and EV charging station has no simple possibility to connect additional cable to some digital input. This would be the simple solution to meet the requirement for blocking charging by remote signal from distributor - simply set/clear digital input pin in the Cerbo GX and block EV charging by SW and open internal contactor in EV charging station...

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Lucian Popescu (Victron Energy Staff) ♦♦ motylu commented · Apr 21, 2023 at 01:28 PM

yes, we can add it

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John Lucian Popescu (Victron Energy Staff) ♦♦ commented · Jun 21, 2023 at 08:15 AM

Hi Lucian,

As a recent adopter of the EV charger in to an ESS environment, I'm looking at this thread with interest. I would reinforce the OP's observations with respect to prioritisation of excess solar between the back-up battery and the EV. In my use case, as with many others I suspect, the EV isn't always connected, particularly during the day, so there is need to take maximum advantage of the times that it is connected - deferring back-up battery charging to those other times when the EV is disconnected.

I had assumed that this was covered by the 'Minimum back-up battery SoC required to start charging in Auto Mode' setting - such that once the back-up battery was at that specified level and the charger in auto mode, all excess would be sent to EV charger (if connected). However - it doesn't appear to function this way, so out of curiosity I would be interested to know what it is intended to do?

I'm keen to try and address my specific use can requirements through a node-red flow, but I seem to constrained by the lack of a functionality within ESS to specify/set a maximum ESS charge level. If you have any ideas, I would be keen to hear about them.

Thanks in advance.

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Lucian Popescu (Victron Energy Staff) ♦♦ John commented · Jun 21, 2023 at 04:32 PM

noted, we will find a way to do this. Thanks!

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motylu Lucian Popescu (Victron Energy Staff) ♦♦ commented · Dec 02, 2023 at 06:10 PM

Hello @Lucian Popescu (Victron Energy Staff) ,

many thanks for adding possibility to block EV charging (added in FW 1.26), which can be used for blocking requirement from grid operator in the Czech Republic and maybe in other countries.

Now this is possible only through changing parameter via Modbus. Can this parameter will be also added to EVCS node for using in Node-RED flows?

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Lucian Popescu (Victron Energy Staff) ♦♦ motylu commented · Dec 03, 2023 at 09:12 AM

Hi, I'm not sure what parameter are we talking about, please explain

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motylu Lucian Popescu (Victron Energy Staff) ♦♦ commented · Dec 03, 2023 at 01:03 PM

@Lucian Popescu (Victron Energy Staff) , I am talking about "grid operator external lock" parameter, which is available through Modbus address 5099 (added in FW 1.26), but is not available through EVCS node in Node-RED yet.

Is it possible to add it to EVCS node for using in Node-RED flows?

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snimek-obrazovky-2023-12-03-v140211.png (106.3 KiB)

Lucian Popescu (Victron Energy Staff) ♦♦ motylu commented · Dec 05, 2023 at 11:03 AM

And why you are not using modbus for that??

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motylu Lucian Popescu (Victron Energy Staff) ♦♦ commented · Dec 05, 2023 at 07:26 PM

Yes, this could be done using Modbus, but simplier and more "nicer" solution will be using EVCS node, because until now I made everything using only available options in Victron nodes.

So, there is no plan to add it to EVCS node?

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Answer 3 · 2023-05-10T09:39:18Z

Florian Rada answered · May 10, 2023 at 09:39 AM

Hi everyone,

I'm a new owner of a Victron ESS system (3 x Multiplus 5000, 3 MPPTs, Cerbo GX, EV Charging Station (EVCS) and 4 x 4.4kw lifepo Ampleness batteries).
I have a question related to EV charging station, why it doesn't balanced the AC load on 3 phases? The connection between EVCS and Multiplus AC output is made with 3 phases cable.

I added a screenshot when I'm charging my volvo plugin car.
Could be a possibility to configure EVCS to consum equality on the 3 phases and not to overload only one?

screenshot-2023-05-10-111430.png (79.4 KiB)

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Lucian Popescu (Victron Energy Staff) ♦♦ commented · May 10, 2023 at 10:01 AM

Is the vehicle capable of 3 phase charging? Most plug-in vehicles are charging single phase. If yes, do you have a 3 phase cable between EVCS and vehicle ? The answer for at least one of these questions is probably 'no'. Please check and keep me posted.

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Florian Rada Lucian Popescu (Victron Energy Staff) ♦♦ commented · May 10, 2023 at 10:58 AM

Thank you Lucian for your quick answer. Yes, I already mention the EVCS is connected with a 3 phases cable. Therefore, the only explanation is that my volvo plugin car doesn't work with 3 phases.

thx again. topic closed.

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Pavel Brand Florian Rada commented · Jun 13, 2023 at 08:22 AM

hi,

just to confirm,volvo plug-in polestar xc60(month old) has only 1-phase charging,so switch phases to least used in your home (or least-used during charging periods)

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Answer 4 · 2023-07-13T06:47:35Z

mito555 answered · Jul 13, 2023 at 06:47 AM

I have a system containing a controller, charging station and a batterypack.

I follow the request for more individual and integrated options for the auto mode (without the uber pro modbus possibilities). This moment there needs to be a lot of sun to utilize the auto mode. I would like to tell the system that it can charge the car untill XX % SOC, using solar and grid power.

I would also like the option to start automaticaly, using a combination of battery and grid, but STOP charging if the grid would exceed 2500W (extra costs in Belgium).

I bought the Victron Charging station because I thought it would integrate a lot more, but this moment we still keep using manual mode where we check our SOC % continuesly... Not a great integration :-D

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Florian Rada commented · Sep 04, 2023 at 03:42 PM

Same feeling here, the software of Vicron EV charging station is not so smart at all. Like you, I acquired this product for a single reason and that is 'talking' same language with the other Victron products. But the result is disappointing...

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Answer 5 · 2023-09-04T15:54:44Z

Florian Rada answered · Sep 04, 2023 at 03:54 PM

I have a simple question. Can anyone managed to charge their car from grid (using Victron EV CS of course)?

The winter is coming :) and I have to charge my car from grid (no more sunny days with plenty kW).

Arriving home, plugin the car and no discharging batteries, only from grid. Could be possible with this smart Victron EV CS?

Thx,

Florian

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Lucian Popescu (Victron Energy Staff) ♦♦ commented · Sep 05, 2023 at 07:46 AM

Sure, it is possible! But if you have an issue, please describe it and we will try to help you.

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Florian Rada Lucian Popescu (Victron Energy Staff) ♦♦ commented · Sep 05, 2023 at 08:42 AM

May I ask how? Please provide me a link on the EVCS documentation. I already read it, perhaps I missed that info.

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Lucian Popescu (Victron Energy Staff) ♦♦ Florian Rada commented · Sep 05, 2023 at 08:48 AM

https://www.victronenergy.com/media/pg/EV_Charging_Station_NS/en/index-en.html

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Answer 6 · 2023-09-05T08:56:16Z

Lucian Popescu (Victron Energy Staff) answered · Sep 05, 2023 at 08:56 AM

But what's the issue? Please explain.

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Florian Rada commented · Sep 06, 2023 at 09:53 AM

The issue is simple. :)

I arrived at home in the evening, just plug in the car on 'EVCS manual mode' and my house batteries has been drained out in 3 hours. My intention was to charge my car during the night from grid, not to empty my house batteries.

I want to use my batteries only for house consumers, not to charge my car from them.

What I understood from Victron documentation is:

Allow battery/grid power for auto mode: When enabled, auto mode will continue to charge at minimum current when there is insufficient excess solar power. Power is supplied from the grid or battery. This feature is useful to reduce the number of auto-charge enable/disable cycles while charging in auto mode.

Note that EVCS cannot decide where to get power from (grid or battery), it's up to the inverter.

That has been said, my understanding is that I don't have the option to charge (for emergency cases) from grid without empty my batteries.

Useful feature for this use-case would be:

EVCS should have an option for this 'supply power from grid' mode
By selecting this mode, EVCS send the power consumption to the invertor and the invertor provide the same quantity of power from grid. Therefore, the batteries will be spare and the rest of AC load (from house consumers) will consume from batteries.

Can be setup the invertor to make the deference between the EVCS consumption and house AC load? If not, it is pretty much similar with other products from market.

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Lucian Popescu (Victron Energy Staff) ♦♦ Florian Rada commented · Sep 07, 2023 at 07:52 AM

The EVCS is not going to be differentiated from the rest of the consumers.

In automatic mode, it will charge with the excess power, in manual mode, it will use the same energy as the rest of your system.

You can limit inverter power if you want, and if the system consumes more, it will be taken from the grid.
But at the end, energy is energy, it's not important if you consume 10 kWh with the EVCS from the battery and another 10, from the grid, with the rest of the consumers or the opposite. The invoice from the grid operator will be the same.
So I really don't see any reason for the requested mode.

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GRIGORIU Lucian Popescu (Victron Energy Staff) ♦♦ commented · Sep 07, 2023 at 09:45 AM

This is not my post and sorry to intervene but please consider that timing of consumption may be important for some of us which have a time-variable tarification.

I will describe my case (still on Enphase now migrating to Victron ) :

I have an electric car and I am working so I am charging in the evening ( after 22:00 - because energy prices are at least 50% less). But despite the fact that my house batteries (7kWh) are full in the afternoon they are used for charging the car.

I do not care about the energy consumed during the night BUT in the morning when I wake up, the batteries are empty and so I have to buy energy from the grid ( price 2 to 5x depends on the day). Personally I use around 2 to 3 kwh each morning (lights, some heating for some of us, cooking , last minute ironing, hair dryer etc but can be 5Kwh with wife and 2X kids at home). At 0.6€/Kwh max ( min 0,2€ ) this can be cost effective very fast.

So for me it is obvious that this is a very useful facility. Another solution would be to have the possibility to limit battery discharge during a time-interval if the grid is present ( but that is on the inverter) .

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Lucian Popescu (Victron Energy Staff) ♦♦ GRIGORIU commented · Sep 07, 2023 at 11:53 AM

Then why not having the Charging Station installed separated from the backup system?
Or yes, you can create in node-red a setup, not to use the batteries when the EVCS is charging or for a configured period of time. So that's also possible and you can do it yourself.

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GRIGORIU Lucian Popescu (Victron Energy Staff) ♦♦ commented · Sep 07, 2023 at 02:40 PM

There are plenty of solutions but generaly (for me at least) one use of such discussions is of course to help users but also to help developers understand the needs of the users. The average user is not able to work with nodeRed and would be very happy to have a simple parameter to choose from ( like "allow charge from battery if soc above x%"). In this way you can also solve the issue when the solar production in 10W under the minimun 1,3 Kw and the solar produced power is limited or exported.

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GRIGORIU Lucian Popescu (Victron Energy Staff) ♦♦ commented · Sep 07, 2023 at 02:46 PM

One of the use of such discussions is of course to help users but also to help developers understand the needs of the users. An average user will not be able to work with nodeRed and will love to have a simple option like "allow charging from Battery if SOC above x%" . This will solve also the issue of having a solar production of 10W lower than the minimal 1,3kW needed for charging and thus limiting solar production or exporting instead of charging a car.

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Lucian Popescu (Victron Energy Staff) ♦♦ GRIGORIU commented · Sep 07, 2023 at 03:36 PM

You already have that option, it is not based on SOC, it is based on time. So if there is not enough PV, it will continue charging for that amount of time

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1694100925802.png (198.5 KiB)

GRIGORIU Lucian Popescu (Victron Energy Staff) ♦♦ commented · Sep 07, 2023 at 03:58 PM

Nice but with that option if I start charging during the day and it stops because battery is below say 90% then it will not start again during the nigth when there is cheap energy. It wil still drain the battery. It may seem trivial but from experience most of my consumption is during the morning because the batteries are empty.

I think that Florian Rada's request is not un-usefull.

Still I am taliking on theoretical ground because I am still waiting for my inverter from Victron. Will message you once all is set.

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Lucian Popescu (Victron Energy Staff) ♦♦ GRIGORIU commented · Sep 07, 2023 at 05:52 PM

Please take a look at dynamic ESS, it's still in Beta but will be released soon as part of the OS, so it will work without node red.
https://github.com/victronenergy/dynamic-ess

Florian is asking for something different than you.

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GRIGORIU Lucian Popescu (Victron Energy Staff) ♦♦ commented · Sep 07, 2023 at 06:08 PM

Thanks, I will.

Unfortunately since I will be off grid for the next two years i choosed a mutli RS. I hope I can make it work with it.

I would be glad to have Florian solution.

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Florian Rada Lucian Popescu (Victron Energy Staff) ♦♦ commented · Sep 08, 2023 at 04:31 AM

But at the end, energy is energy, it's not important if you consume 10 kWh with the EVCS from the battery and another 10, from the grid, with the rest of the consumers or the opposite. The invoice from the grid operator will be the same.

So I really don't see any reason for the requested mode.

It is important if you care about your batteries. If I charge my car on manual mode, due to lack of PV production (evening/winter whether) I will empty my batteries every time, reaching that minimum discharging battery level. Instead of my AC load from house consumers, which they discharge only a small part from my batteries over the night.

Just trying to protect my batteries against full discharging everytime when I charge my car.

Hope you can understand my reason now.

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Lucian Popescu (Victron Energy Staff) ♦♦ Florian Rada commented · Sep 08, 2023 at 07:33 AM

If the batteries are not discharged every night when the vehicle is not charging, then yes, that can be a good reason.

Please check this post and maybe contact the author. He might be able to help you to design a node-red flow, that will control the system as you want.

https://community.victronenergy.com/questions/230017/evcs-feature-request-change-ess-min-soc-during-man.html?childToView=230031#comment-230031

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Answer 7 · 2023-09-08T09:22:20Z

stefanwb answered · Sep 08, 2023 at 09:22 AM

@bgrigoriu Did you create a Node Red for your use case to select battery or grid? If yes I would appiciate if you could share it.

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GRIGORIU commented · Sep 08, 2023 at 01:24 PM

Hi, The node red flow was on another thread by motylu (https://community.victronenergy.com/questions/230017/evcs-feature-request-change-ess-min-soc-during-man.html?childToView=230073#comment-230073)

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stefanwb GRIGORIU commented · Sep 08, 2023 at 06:14 PM

ah, sorry - thanks!

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Answer 8 · 2023-09-10T12:15:43Z

jogi answered · Sep 10, 2023 at 12:15 PM

Hi, I'm a user of a 3Phase ESS system and lately installed the EV CS and have the same experience than some of the users that raised the question already, that in auto mode the EV does not start charging if excess energy is below 6amps. Even switching off 2 phases will not enable charging, which does not make sense for me since 1-4kW will go into grid when SOC is at the preset level or higher. Especially since when the sun forecast of the day has been introduced I would expect the real time system to predict, knowing all parameters when EV charging can start and stop to right in time charge ESS batteries towards the sunset.
I'm still running the FW 1.26/4.3 and wondering what has improved on the latest FW release or even with the 3.3/beta. Is there any download-page of the latest release since the system doesn't detect a newer version?
Thx for a advice.
Jochen

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Lucian Popescu (Victron Energy Staff) ♦♦ commented · Sep 11, 2023 at 10:06 AM

Hi, if you are using the unit in single phase, it should start charging with 6A on single phase. Can you please record a video from the main webpage of the unit while this is happening. And then share with me?

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