Hello,
I’d like to share a few thoughts that might help improve the user experience with the EV Charging Station. Some of the points below may have already been mentioned somewhere on the forum, but I wanted to summarize my thoughts and suggestions in one place. If any of the suggestions below are already possible, I would appreciate it if someone could point me in the right direction. Thank you in advance.
- When switching between Auto and Manual mode, the Start/Stop state could be preserved as it was before the mode change.
- The scheduler could have the ability to switch between Auto and Manual mode at specified times. Use case: switch to Auto mode on Friday afternoon and back to Manual on Monday morning.
- Support for using HDO (high/low tariff signaling used in Slovakia) to control charging — similar to Auto mode + low-tariff grid priority.
In Auto mode:
- There could be a longer (or configurable) delay when checking available PV surplus (or reserve), to avoid unstable oscillations. In my case, the current sometimes increases to 9 A, but then clouds pass and it should drop to 8 A. However, before the car’s actual consumption or the available reserve gets updated, it drops further to 7 A. At that point, there is enough surplus again, so it rises to 8 A — but again, updates lag behind, so it jumps back to 9 A. At that point the load is again too high, so it decreases. This whole process repeats in a loop. (Maybe I have something misconfigured — I currently don’t use a calibration table.)
- It would be helpful if the charging window could also be based on PV production, not just the state of charge of the house battery.
- Stopping the charging process or triggering a timeout in Auto mode could benefit from configurable hysteresis. In my case, charging sometimes stops because 20–100 W is briefly drawn from the battery, even though it’s a very small amount. Within a few seconds, PV surplus starts to flow again and charging restarts. This stop-start cycle repeats unnecessarily.
Nice to have:
- If the hardware supports it, enabling 5 A as the minimum current in Auto mode would be appreciated.
- Charging sessions could be stored in VRM, or at least on the SD card in the Cerbo GX, as events that include session cost and session saved cost, since these values are already being calculated (or maybe I just haven’t found where). As an extended feature, it could be possible to assign sessions — even manually, either afterward or directly on the display — to a specific vehicle.
- A button to unlock the charging cable and end the session on the display would be especially appreciated by Tesla users. I’ve found (unverified) that IEC 61851 / ISO 15118 standards support such commands in some form.
- Option to permanently lock the cable to the wallbox, if supported by hardware.
- VRM could offer more detailed charging statistics over a selected time period, including session cost, saved cost, and energy from solar/battery/grid. For battery/grid consumption, users could choose whether it’s counted towards the vehicle, the house, or split between both.
- Option to bypass the battery for EVCS, if system safety allows. When charging a vehicle while the house draws from the battery, the system could pull the vehicle’s consumption directly from the grid — even with some delay or offset. Benefits: less wear on house batteries, reduced inverter load (and noise), and — unlike inverter AC-In passthrough — allows EV charging even during a grid outage.
Thank you for your time and all the great work you’re doing.