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New RAV4 Prime using Open EVSE and emonpi to charge with solar

Aloha My wife and I will be getting our new RAV4 Prime in the next month or so and are excited to join the world of EV. We have a solar system on our house and the dream is to charge the car using excess solar production. I’m reasonably tech savvy and it looks like the dream can be achieved using the Open EVSE eco mode working together with Emonpi monitoring our excess production. Before I purchased and head down the path I was hoping to clarify a few things from those in the know, thank you for entertaining my questions. My wife gets home from work around 3 pm and over the next two hours we have an average excess of 7 KWH of production, which aligns perfectly with a half charge on the Prime which should be enough to cover her daily commute of 20 miles. My hope is I can setup the open EVSE so when she comes home she can plug in and the system will automatically divert the extra 7 kWh or so to charge the Prime. Is this possible without logging into the Open EVSE interface each time to set eco mode? Although I might be able to teach her to do this, it certainly would be easier on me if the system automatically engages eco mode and charged with excess solar after she physically plugs in. I’m very appreciative that Open EVSE is available with such functionality even if it is a little diy to setup, I was disappointed to see the usual suspects in the commercial EVSE world don’t offer such functionality, as achieving this seems essential for a complete solar/ev ecosystem not depending on the grid. Thank you for your consideration, I’m excited to be entering the world of EV with the full solar powered dream.

I see, thank you. I agree that would be ideal and empowering. Unfortunately for me, my wife tends to be forgetful when dealing with technical matters. It usually is left up to me to facilitate. So there’s no way to set a default to eco mode in the configuration unless overridden with other programming? A one hour timer at the 6.6 kw charge rate of the prime might be the easiest, the house battery backup can smooth it out although less efficient. Thank you for your input.


You could have a physical switch which sends a MQTT signal to your Emoncms and then use that to modify the available power (e.g multiply by zero).


I think it's more empowering to provide knowledge rather than trying to automate too much. I spent a few hours writing up some documentation for my wife.
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