EV Smart charging with dynamic energy prices in the EU

Energy
1

I would like to share my enthusiasm about the HACS integration EV Smart Charging.

I have a BMW EV and a Webasto wallbox. I want to minimize my electricity bill by taking advantage of dynamic electricity prices (in the EU).
Looking for ways to do that I discovered the EV Smart Charging integration. And it is amazing.

EV Smart Charging can use one of three sources for the ‘day ahead prices’. I use the ENTSO-e Transparency Platform integration for this.

You can configure how to read the current and target SoC for your EV. In my situation I use the BMW Connected Drive integration for that.

You can configure how to detect whether the EV is connected to the wallbox. In my case I have used the Modbus integration to control the Webasto Unite wallbox. I use this to check whether the EV is connected and the session is authorized.

You can configure how start and stop the charging process. In my case I use the BMW Connected Drive for this.

I now have this operational for the normal use case: charge the EV to the fixed target SoC (80%) each time the car is @home. Taking into account todays and tomorrows prices.
I have bought a Raspberry Pi to run this on. And managed to keep the power consumption of the ‘always on’ Raspberry Pi down to 1 or 2 watts. Otherwise I would not save any cost by using this.

Currently I’m trying to add a simple interface to manually override this process for use cases:

  • I need the EV charged the day after tomorrow, because I’m working at home tomorow.
  • I need the EV charged immediately now and after that optimize for cost again.
  • I need the EV charged to 100% SoC once because I need to make a long trip. And after that revert to the safe target SoC of 80% again.

For this I will be using the HA companion App on my smartphone.
Set up https access for extra security by encrypting and thus protecting the HA credentials.
Added the Wireguard addon to create a VPN from the internet to HA.

With this setup I can use the App to control the charging from a simple dashboard with some buttons for the different use cases. Hopefully so simple that my home mate can also use this :wink:

So if you have an EV and want to optimize your charging costs, give this I try.
My ‘business case’ is as follows:

  • I pay €0.40 per kWh on a public charger (11kW)
  • I pay €0.30 per kWh at home with a fixed tarif contract
  • I pay €0,20 per kWh at home with a dynamic tarif contract. Ofcourse on average.
    To get this benefit al the time, I have spent €150 on my HA equipment
    So give it a go as well.
1 Like
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What a cool write-up of what you have been able to achieve. I am really impressed!

I came across this as I own a BMW iX3 and I have been trying to control the charging of my EV.

I was able to get the Day Ahead prices and was able to connect with BMW connect drive. As I don’t have access to the charger itself (it’s company owned), I tried now to control the charging as well through BMW Connected Drive, but unfortunately that does also not work.

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When looking in Settings | Devices & service, tab Integration. In the tile ‘BMW Connected Drive’ click on ‘1 device’ to show your BMW.

Do you see something like this:

image
image334×614 23 KB

The third entry from the top ‘Charging’ can be used to start or stop charging. If you toggle this switch (and than click somewhere else on the screen to activate the change). Can you see that it will start charging? It takes at least 15 seconds before you see the response.

This will be visible in the Sensors section:
image
In the sensor ‘Charging status’.
(Note: I have three sensors shown. This is caused by updates of this Integration. But they are alle the same sensor).

Another thing is the ‘Charging Mode’. If that is not ‘Immediate charging’, the start of charging might be delayed. This is visible in the My BWM App on your smartphone.

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Thanks for explaining @BrainDra1n. I was only now able to check after the issues with BMW Connected Drive in HA. Unfortunately, I don’t have the “charging” option. I can only change the charging mode. This seems to be the case for the ix3.

image

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As far as I know the Connected Drive integration uses the API that is also used by BMW smartphone app. In the BMW app do you have an option to start charging?

If so, you can contact the developers.
See:

Maybe they can than add this option for the ix3 as well

6

Apparently, it has to do with the BMW OS version. Versions 7 like mine us using don’t support. A pity.