BETA: Connect your Electrical Vehicle to VRM

Beta testing VRM beta
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41

Nice! Works with Zoe.

As to the “Paid Feature”: I have always wonderd, how Victron manages to provide the vrm features for free.

I do not expect to get vrm for free just because I bought a MP and some MPPTs.

In my view that would be like buying a car and expecting the manufacturer to provide gasoline for free or at least servicing.

I think paying for VRM would be ok. Maybe for a more responsive layer, as I have to switch between views nearly every time i look at the app to get realtime data, what about a Refresh button by the way?

For this service alone, i would have to be in the mood to want that. homeassistant has a feature for my car, so i kind of see the data already today, having someone to collect and provide them for me even better.

Also, what would be the next feature to pay for?

Has no one ever wondered how long the vrm service would be free? cerbo updates? portal? Forecasts? Graphs? Ess?

That is all addon value we get, not just “"my data”. If Victron started charging for access to those, i would really get angry and try to find ways around.

Paying for additional Service ? Why not?

42

SC
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Unfortunately, my list of installations (I have 9) is also empty, firmware is 3.70~61.

43

do you have a Victron charging station on any of those instalations?

44

Yes, in One of them all

45

make sure that on that one, the GX is updated to the latest beta

46

I would love to try it, but when I log in to my polestar account, my EV is not linked to it.

I think that may be a new zealand thing. Does anyone here, based in NZ, have their car linked to their account?

Best

Graham

47

Hi @Lpopescu , thanks for this great feature and plans to work on it, I almost started to build it myself in NodeRed, so I will hold off for now :slight_smile: I connected our Tesla without issues, eventually. The note about the need to upgrade to 3.70 (which is “beta”) did not occur to me first, I totally missed the note in the UI. Not sure if it’s possible to make it more visible for the testers. Also I did not get redirected from the payment gate back to VRM, after filling in the testing CC. But reloading VRM in second tab, all worked and was connected and payed.

As the feedback, I don’t have a problem paying 60 EUR for this feature, but it has to bring some value. If not a monetary one covering the subscription cost fully, at least some providing a feeling like “the car is charging as cheaply as possible“ (compared to a static scheduler / Auto mode in EVCS). Only having state of charge and range visible in VRM is not enough, I can see the same in Tesla app or HomeAssistant / TeslaMate as often as I like, for no costs. The interesting part would be using the SoC of the car (or maybe even the history of consumption / the rides of the car) for DESS scheduling, combing it with the data collected for the house. And creating an EVCS charging schedule based on that.

So having some “External Control” mode for the EVCS, where it would schedule charging of EVCS overnight, during the most favorable prices. Like “car is at 40% at 20:00, let’s schedule 3 cheapest hours overnight, before 6:00, to let it charge to 80%”. I’d like to see this visualised in the VRM (a graph in DESS section, with projected charging slots, same as projected general consumption).

Another useful function, in my view, would be some “pricing report” for EVCS. Simply how much it cost you to charge your vehicle, so that you can have an idea comparing to a gas vehicle. DESS knows about the effective price for every given hour (or 15 mins) and EVCS knows how much it consumed during that internal. So putting these 2 together.

As I don’t like the “freemium” model of services, I’d maybe consider two tiers for the EVs integration:

A. “classic” – you only get the basic information from your EV, like SoC, projected range and location. Data is not used further for DESS. This tier would be free or pay-as-you go (user would be able to select how often is the data pulled from the API and user would get billed accordingly). If the user is fine fetching the data once per 24h, bill is lower, if user wants it every 5 mins, bill is higher). The data would be somehow available from VRM (added to the API), so that users can integrate with it from e.g. NodeRed, if they wish.

B. “pro“ - everything in A, plus the data is used for DESS and dynamic scheduling of EVCS. You pay a yearly flat rate, as the data is fetched as often as DESS needs it. A report is created each month, summarizing the EVCS usage, costs and “saved costs” compared to charging randomly whenever (without DESS for example).

Have a nice day,
Josef

48

Hi, thanks for your feedback! Yes, all the features requested above are being worked on.

Regarding the costs, since we have to pay for the communication with vehicles, making it free is not possible.

So there are only 2 options for us - not do it at all, and there is no integration with the vehicles. Or have a paid subscription that is covering the communication with the vehicles.
What do you think we should do?

49

Nice features would be like:
Charging priorities

  • low: only charge with surplus
  • mid: charge up to min level, till time next day
  • high: fully charge in next hours

These three options can be handled in one mask but it would be nice if one can activate some presets just by one click in the VRM-APP or dashboard.

And if BiDi V2H comes in to play, one can think about some more scenarios.

50

Thanks! all are on our to-do list!

51

Hello Lucian,

auto charging controlled as announced is the max priority.

I have already a bit of experience with similar automatization charging system. Here are some my observations that I want to share:

- I see as a big issue at competitor’s system is that is based on day starting at 00:00 and ending at 24:00. Much better is to start charge planning e.g. with sunrise (to use completely production period and cheap nigh period for planning of daily charging). Must is NOT to try to reach some condition till end of the day 24:00. Even better is to combine with definition of times (user definition of times or data based prediction) when car is typically available home at charger each week day.

- Very useful are these user options: 1. Charge my car till XX% till TT:TT hours. 2. Keep always my car between XX and YY% till TT:TT hours, 3. Always charge car till ZZ% if price is negative

Regarding other integrations – I would like to have DESS controlled heating system. Nice to have is to get PWM (or 0-10V?) signal to control heating system. Fully fine would be to have Cerbo GX relay on/off signal to control heating pump or boiler, or other device…

Conditions can be:

- Daily heat by XX kWh

- Switch on heating system if sales/purchase price is less then…

- Switch on heating system YY hours daily

- Use „user define building heat loss“ and based on weather forecast calculate daily heat lost and plan heating times accordingly

Two more questions – Is it possible to add more EV cars to VRM? Will the DESS charging support more EVCS?

Good day to complete Victron team!

52

Yes, you can have multiple cars added on the same instalation, the price is per instalation, not per car

53

Great news, I really like it and can’t wait to try it out further.

I got my Volvo connected though when trying to add my wife’s Mini I do not get a response after clicking the Connect button. It does work when selecting other car brands.

Being able to invoice charge cost to 3rd parties would be a nice addition too!

1 Like
54

I see already many nice features mentioned here in the topic.
Some other idea’s:

  • As typically a car has a quite large battery you can often decide to not charge for several days and only charge on the most cheap days/nights. But the prices are only available for the next day, so then you have to take some predictions into account. This prediction can also be used for DESS.
    • Think in The Netherlands in the winter the prices are quite well corrolated to the wind near the coast
  • Feed into DESS your expexted charge plans (beside or override the predictions based on historical data analysis)
2 Likes
55

And there was me getting all excited until I read the requirements :disappointed_face:

I originally wanted a Victron charging station, but as its not compatible with Octopus Intelligent Go, I had to get something else.

PS. Linking the car (e-Niro) all worked well, until I got to choosing an installation. Perhaps I just need to link it to Home Assistant, although be much nicer to see it in the VRM.

Another vote for an option of supplying the relevant EV information ourselves, either via a Home Assistant integration or other means. Also official method of integrating third party EVSE.

56

Intelligent Go needs OCCP (which EVCS hasn’t got) and, to be honest, it’s not very good because it wouldn’t read my car’s SoC. I run openHAB for home automation. I get the VRM data using the buit-in Node-Red in the VRM. I have a ‘cron’ task which runs at 1130pm and, if the car is connected, it will charge until 530am (or until the car hits 80% SoC). I have solar panels on my (40 yards away) lockup garage and another EVCS which will charge the car (if we ever get any sun again) from solar. Both report to openHAB and I can see the solar data etc all in one place.

If you are running Home Assistant it may be worth looking at EVCC.io as they have an integration into HA

1 Like
57

And what can we do with this info? :slight_smile:

58

It all works well for me (apart from the gripe that you have US or SI units but no Imperial units - most of us in the UK use metric apart from mileage)

59

I was replying to Ronski about his issues with EVSE and Octopus

60

Why making this so complex?

Just fill in de current soc off the car when plugging in @ home in the app. From that moment system can calculated the Soc based on power loaded by the car x with chargelosses.

I do this via Node Red and own EMS system and this works perfect. If the EMS says the car has Soc off 80% then the car app says just the same.