Anyone interested in adding smart control to a dumb ROLEC EV Charger

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1

A couple of years ago I pieced together various bits of info on how to add:

  1. Start and Stop control to a 7KW ROLEC EV Car Charger
  2. Charge Rate control to the same charger

The first part - is simple, and can be done very easily, using any contact controller to interrupt the charge control wire.

The second part was more complicated and needs a bit more kit.

If its something that might be helpful or useful, I will do a write up. It has been reliable for a couple of years and allows the dumb charger to become smart and consider excess solar to control the charge rate (I do that using Node Red but of course possible in Hass automations too).

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My current dashboard to control the device is:

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A combo of Bubble cards, sensors created and the absolute current and power are coming from power sensors (separate to the main work, on esp monitoring various power cables in the house)

2

If yes, I will do a better write up, but in the meantime anyone that lands on this and wants to review the second option, I relaise I already did a writeup for another audience. Which is a word doc here: Rolec Charger add Smart functions.docx

3

This looks awesome and i really appretiate that you shared this wwith the community.

Bests

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4

Thanks for sharing this the community. Any chance we can have access to the contents of that word doc? I don’t have an outlook account.

Also I am looking to get a Rolec Zura and I wonder if any of this would be applicable.

5

I think the zura is already smart charge, though not sure what the internals are. This could work but I really don’t know. Its for controlling the Mode 3 Controller, which may be inside it. As per this page 16/32 Amp Rolec Communication Unit

Re the file, I didn’t think it needed any account to access? Should be externally accessible. I don’t have anywhere else to host it sorry.