@TomRose as per our FB messenger chat a while back:
Like most people with solar in NZ, we have a 5kw export limit even though our system is capable of generating 8.2kw.
At the moment the solar divert is either all or nothing - this has a few issues:
It seems to put just slightly more than the solar excess into the car i.e. it ends up drawing around 200-300w from the grid
It actually charges the car too quickly in summer, so by midday the car is full and we no longer have anywhere for the excess to go as the inverter limits to the 5kw export limit
It would be great if the solar divert could have a setting for a export target i.e. export 4kw to the grid, and all the rest is diverted to the car
OR (not preferred but maybe easier from a dev view)
make the solar divert honor the load management settings so I could just set load management to a max of say 3kw during the middle of the day thereby forcing the rest of the excess to export to the grid.
We are shortly going to be rolling out a new version of firmware which will be capable of handling both of these problems.
On the app side there will be a staged approach to unlocking the capability as it has been challenging to find a way to make the UI clear and easy to understand for the myriad solar configurations out there.
I think what you need will actually be in the first release of the app, so if you check in a couple of weeks your charger should be running version 2.5.4 and you will be able to set it to aim at a target of 4kW export.
Hi Aaron, Your setup sounds like ours, 8.2kW with a 5kW export cap. We also have a Paladin diverting to our HWC which typically consumes enough (3kW HWC element) to avoid inverter throttling back until late morning and then on a sunny day we’ll plug in either of our EVs to prevent inverter throttling.
In your case does your EV’s charging management allow the input to be reduced so that the charging period is longer, say limit it to ~20A (~4.8kW)?
Unfortunately no the charge management in the EV only allows us to set a time, not a load.
And the load management in Evnex is not honoured when using solar divert, it seems to only apply to the grid load.
Rollout of 2.5.4 is scheduled to start on Monday, pending final review on Friday. It will take a week or two to make it out to all chargers in the field.
Is the firmware 2.5.4 also for the E7 as our wall charger currently on 2.4.1.E9FEB7A and website page Firmware Updates shows for E7 & X series v2.3.0 - Latest back on 31 Oct 2023
We have a 10.5kW solar array, power plan export is 12c and the night rate pay 8.75c, this time is year does not take much to reach the 5kW export limit. Have set app to start charging when export reaches 4.9kW, one of our EVs can adjust charging speed manually 5A to 32A from the phone app so can adjust while away from home to keep export close to the 5kW limit and use the excess over the export limit to charge EV so the inverter doesn’t thottle back and waste production. Would be better if charger was able to adjust charge speed to keep export close the the 5kW limit. Our other Evs can not adjust charge speed, so when at home during the day I usually charge them with 15A caravan socket and charge cable that is adjustable 6/10/15A and set to suit to soak up most of the excess generation over the 5kW export limit.
Yes that version did exist for the E7 charger - I’m not sure why yours was not updated. We are actually in the process of rolling out 2.6.0 so I have pushed that to your charger and you can now configure the target export to 4.5kW or whatever level makes sense to you!
Thanks Tom
Will have a look at my settings in the app and see how I can better use it for our situation of using our excess solar generation over the 5kW export limit for charging our EVs this time of year when we are generating a lot of electricity, we use it or loss it.