Hi all,
I have a system, for which I have trouble understanding of how to set it up and where to place the energy meter.
Please see the simplified diagram of the setup, only relevant connections are drawn. Basically the 3ph Multiplus with batteries are the base and at a earlier point in the AC net a 1ph solar inverter is connected (data available via modbus/sunspec) and in the future a 3ph EV charger.
My question is how I can achieve that the solar inverter is properly integrated into the system to maximise solar usage and to have the ev charger integrated as well. I want to properly regulate grid consumtion to zero. Since Victron EES regulates battery charge acoording to learned demand, I want to integrate the EV charger to let this demand appear as well. But I want to avoid that the grid regulation takes EV charging into account and pump battery charge into the EV.
Can I achieve that by smart placement of the energy meter? Where should it be put?
It is doable to integrate the charger to have it in the balance but only use grid and solar power to charge?
Hi if you are talking about a normal EV charger then yes on single phase, the one I recommend in the UK is HyperVolt. So this is a two part solution the EV charger monitors grid load for load curtailment at least in the UK lots of chargers also use the fact that it can see charge going back to the grid that this energy is solar once it sees -1.4kW going back to the grid if the charger has a solar function like the one mentioned you could utilise that energy to charge the car automagically, there are some settings to this ie you could use the grid to supplement some of the charge if the power from solar is reduced ie clouds or for it to not make up any difference and just cut out until enough solar is available.
The EV charger would have to be at the start of the system and any CT that the multiple plus is reading from the grid would have to be after the charger. I did a little short on YouTube to tell people that they don’t have to get integrated chargers made by the same ESS manufacturer, they just need to use the one that serves/like the best. Hopefully the link will offer some help on placement ie pause video and look at the diagram PS this diagram is only single phase.
(EDIT: Just looked at your diagram and you would need an EV charger that monitors all Phases but you only have solar that would ever service one phase, the model here would not work as it’s only one phase solar and the other devices are all three phase)
Hi,
Thanks for your answer.
You missed the point I am interested in:
It`s easy to put the Charger before the energy meter, but then the victron does not know much about it. When ESS predicts eg 10kWh solar for the day and knows batteries will only take 4kWh including load over the day, ESS will start feeding excess to the grid way before the batteries are full. This leads to the situation, that grid feedin is e.g. 800W, while the remaining power trickle charges the batteries until full. But with 800W I cannot charge the EV. So I need the possibility that ESS knows about the charger, so that it can charge the batteries faster so that once they`re full, I can start charging the EV. It is about awareness of the ESS that I have enough power to charge the EV yet avoid having battery energy going into the EV.
No ESS is only interested in making sure there is no grid import if that’s what you have enabled, ESS does not work in the way you mentioned the forecast doesn’t make the ESS charge the battery any faster if it sees 2kW it would use the max charge rate that the batteries can take and the BMS in the batteries deciding the DVCC value, DESS is the only thing that predicts solar generation for use and actually act on it you can’t have ESS and DESS at the same time.
You could look at a nodeRed solution when battery is at X lower charge rate to battery.
Well, that’s not what I see everyday in the system. Battery would happily take 2kW+, yet GX exports more than half of the solar power with the batteries still at <90%, because forecast and predicted load say there’s still plenty of energy during the day.
If the system would be aware of the EV charger, I could adjust the forecast by an expected EV energy and my assumption would be that ESS would change charging behaviour then.
I can already add EV charge energy in the forecast, which gets erased by each update, I assume because there’s no charger in the system.
Edit: You are right, I wrote ESS but meant DESS.
Edit2: No, I was wrong. DESS is off, said behavior happens with ESS on only, optimized without battery life.
