question

Janek Plathe avatar image
Janek Plathe asked

Victron OEM Wallbox - Status & features

Dear Victron,

in May i have seen your blog entry presenting an future Victron Wallbox, i was super happy as i would assume that it would make my life way easier in regard to dynamic/smart EV charging as part of an offgrid 3 phase island system.

As the car is now available i have to decide whether i wait for the finished Victron product (which hopefully offers dynamic/smart charging) or go with an DIY solution including extensive programming (what I wane avoid).


Maybe I am lucky and you are already in a state to spread some more infos to the community!?



Regards

Janek

battery charging3 phase
1 comment
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Matthias Lange - DE avatar image Matthias Lange - DE ♦ commented ·

Do you have a link to the blog post?

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5 Answers
As avatar image
As answered ·

Im also very interested with this new product

if you have in short time news it will good news for me

Best regards


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n-dee avatar image
n-dee answered ·

+1

As Austria just raised government sponsorship to 600€ per Wallbox I'm looking for solutions which are best combinable with victron. :-)

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As avatar image
As answered ·

Hi

some news or product for this?

i see the new documentation...

https://www.victronenergy.com/live/evchargingstation

BR

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Janek Plathe avatar image
Janek Plathe answered ·

Good News and sharing a bit my experience.

Last summer we got our first EV (an VW E-Up) and I started to dig into the topic of how to charge the EV intelligent if the power supply setup is configured as an island and by that no measurement data is available from an grid meter telling me the current feed in /overproduction.

I was seeing forward to the Victron Wallbox, its availability and functions but as good things take their time – I build my own system until it is available.

I am living in an residential house with 19,5 kwp PV and a 3phase Multiplus II 5000 system, system is configured as Island system and mostly unplugged from the grid.

The problem:

As usually if the batteries are full the Victron system will throttle the PV Output to the exact amount of energy used by the house and as result it is very difficult the find out which quantity of power currently would be available if not reduced.

For the EV Charging I of course need this information in order to enable the EVSE (control unit for EV charging and communicating with the car) to adjust dynamical the charging speed/amperage supplied to the car according to the current PV potential production.

My solution was an light intensity sensor (BH1750) for measuring the Realtime LUX / Irradiation value from the sun. This sensor data is send via MQQT to the automation system and recalculated to an value equaling the potential max output of the PV system in watt, every second.

By subtracting the current house load from the potential PV production I get wattage available for charging the car (in Ampere).

The automatization system is doing this calculation every minute and updates the EVSE with the currently available amperage for charging (dynamic EV charging).

Additional of course there is an start /stop automatization implemented.

If the car is plugged in the car will start charging in the morning if the house battery is above an certain SOC and if a certain potential PV output was available for a certain time. If all conditions are fulfilled the charging will start with 1 phase @ 6A. From this moment on every minute the availability of potential PV production will be checked and the amperage ramped up from 6A up to 16A in steps of 1A until the system has equalized

In case of an rain shower or cloud, the system will ramp down in steps of 2A per minute until again the load equals the produced power.

In case the weather forecast is good (clears sky forecasted for the day) the system would start automatically with 2 or even 3 phase charging giving it an charging speed of up to 11 kw per hour.

I am very happy, it was a long way but at the end the automatization is reliable and the user interface (IOBroker Vis application) gives me all adjustment and visualization possibilities i need.

For building you need basic knowledge in:

MQTT and Modbus, ESP8266 programming, IOBroker or other Middleware, Electrical skills for building the type 2 plug charging hardware

For the future I am seeing forward to the Victron Wallbox and its functions as I will need an second Wallbox for the second EV but until then I am very happy with the system and its full and integrated automatization.

Greetings

janek


2 comments
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Hi @Janek Plathe

That's great work!!

Maybe you want to post this also here:
https://community.victronenergy.com/spaces/31/index.html

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Janek Plathe avatar image Janek Plathe Daniël Boekel (Victron Energy Staff) ♦♦ commented ·

HI Daniel,

thanks :-)

its shared in the modspace

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n-dee avatar image
n-dee answered ·

Janek did some great work!

For the "inexpierienced" like me ;-) there are plenty other possibilities.
Of course they don't work offgrid very well :-( (one may have to fix it on lowest charging-step e.g. 6A 1 phase) but for the time being without victron wallbox its good and in case of my solution cheap aswell!

I combined the following devices:
go-eCharger HOME https://go-e.co/produkte/go-echarger-home/ which is portable btw.

and openWB Standalone https://openwb.de/shop/?product=openwb-standalone which is able to read out venus/cerbo and is able to control the go-eCharger (and even two of them)

regards,

Andy

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