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OpenEVSE loadbalancing

Hi,


I'm currently investigating to build my own charging point for my EV at home.


I live in the Netherlands, and in euro we tend to use multiple phases with less amps Vs 1 phase with a lot of amps.


I currently see that i have 2 options, one is OpenEVSE (duh) and the other is SmartEVSE.


I really like OpenEVSE as it looks a lot more open and better to integrate, but my main concern is Loadbalancing.


As my home has 3x25A I can easily blow a fuse if other equipment is also turned on at home. SmartEVSE has a loadbalancing feature by measuring the mains power consumption. (through CT sensors)


Is there a load balancing feature in OpenEVSE?

i did see a post on the blog that was explaining about balancing between multiple OpenEVSE points, but not something to balance the mains power.


Or is it currently only possible to do this by manually adjusting the charging power through MQTT? I'm a bit afraid what happens if this system fails or has a hickup....


any help or ideas are greatly appreciated! 


Hi,

OpenEVSE does not have a three-phase load tracking scheme, only one. The easiest option is to limit the charging current in the controller settings. This should protect the network from overload. As it seems to me, an electric car with three-phase charging will try to pull approximately equal power from each phase.

Hi,


How about 1 phase tracking?


can this be used with the eco mode?




Hi, I think so.

 

Try to just set the minimum mode to 6A and start charging. If it works, then the electric car should not pull more power. If everything is ok, set the normal power of charging, which is designed for your electrical network in the house.

Hi,


Same problem here, i would like to charge using dynamic load balancing. I have a Digital P1 power meter and i have connected my Domoticz home system to the P1 meter. I would luke to charge with 1 phase 32A but my home has only a 35A fuse, during the night there are no problems but the overhead is so small i realy would like to have load balancing.


Since i am not a programmer, (started learning but its very hard) i would like to see some new things implemented in Open EVSE. Since a lot of other charge controllers already have load balancing, and the hardware is already available in open EVSE.


Also solar charging would be a fenomenal option to include, which is also possible when connected with a P1 meter. I think the ESP32 is also beefy enough to do the load balancing by its self, 


For now i am going to try, making a load balancer in blockly (Domoticz) and talk to the EPS32 and controller using link adress and RAPI commands. But i would rather see the ESP32 doing this job because not depending on wifi, and much more stable.

@Jelle Klinge


OpenEVSE can do what you wish with the Solar Divert Feature. From your Domoticz home system output the amount of power available in watts to a MQTT topic. Then subscribe to the topic with the OpenEVSE Wifi and click the eco button. OpenEVSE will follow the watts available.




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Thanks for your reply. Can i do load balancing with solar divert or only divert my generated solar energy. Maybe its possible to implement load balancing in the same way. If i calculate the left amps on my grid to an positive value and use it as imput for solar divert it will probably work. Could this be something worth implementing in an better way in the next update? Would love to code this myself but i dont,t have enough skills.

@Jelle Klinge


Solar divert can be used for just about anything. If you feed it the watts available it will follow. It really does not matter what logic was used. It can come from available solar, excess energy, shared energy, etc.


No coding on the OpenEVSE side is needed, probably just a better name.

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