Has someone controlled the ocpp charger to consume the excess solar output?

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Thanks for this thread and bringing to our attention the iammeter OCPP simulator, which is really useful for testing.

I also wanted to highlight the strong alignment between OCPP to control your EV charging (and discharging) and EMHASS: An Energy Management for Home Assistant.

I am using EMHASS extensively to coordinate the charging of EV during the cheapest windows of the day, including consuming excess solar, but also to determine the optimal times to export, using V2G functionally which is supported under OCPP 2.0.1.

Does the iammeter OCPP simulator also support exports from the vehicle?

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Sorry, do not support yet.

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@iammeter are you still offering the WEM3080 for testing?

I have solar, and am about to get an OCPP charger, and am looking to automate charging on excess solar if possible.

I am the owner of the Solcast integration at GitHub - BJReplay/ha-solcast-solar: Solcast Integration for Home Assistant used by 7,000 installations in home assistant to forecast solar production.

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Hi BJReplay,

Could you let me know how you plan to use the WEM3080?

Currently, we don’t consider an EV charger to be the best option for consuming solar surplus. This is because:

  1. The OCPP protocol has a minimum charging power requirement, which can limit flexibility.
  2. EV charging often occurs at night, when solar surplus is unavailable.
  3. Even if charging happens during the day, most users prefer to charge as quickly as possible at maximum power, rather than relying on fluctuating solar surplus.

At present, we believe the best option for utilizing solar surplus is a boiler, as it can efficiently use nearly all the excess energy—provided the tank is large enough and the heating process can run continuously.

You can find more details here:
:link: PV Heater Control

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Thanks for the reply, @iammeter.

I don’t have an electric boiler, nor space to install one - I am stuck with instantaneous gas.

I am planning to use it for EV charging for several reasons:

We are almost always home during the day.

We don’t have a garage or off street parking - we need to run a cable across the footpath to charge, so we won’t leave that out after dark.

I charged on a granny charger at 2.1kW (9A) until 4pm today, and turned it off then because solar output was dropping to 2.8kW.

Even if I can only reduce output down to 1.4kW (6A), I could have charged on excess solar until 5:30, and put roughly 2kWh more in over that next 90 minutes.

I can charge faster for three hours (at 32A) during the middle of the as I get free grid power for three hours.

So I hope to combine 3 hours of fast charging with additional hours of excess solar charging.

So, even though it might not be ideal, I think that it can work well.

In Victoria the feed in tariff is dropping to 0.9c/kWh, so there is a good reason to use excess solar even if you can’t perfectly manage charging power.

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OK, I got it.
Please email us [email protected]
and attach the address of this page.
My colleague will continue to confirm with you some issues by email.