Has someone created a working charging solution?

adooze · October 14, 2022, 11:44am

Hello Everyone,

I’m searching for a working script or automation that can help me build a charging solution for a Powerstation using mostly not used pc energy.

Here’s the basic idea:

Buy a powerstation that is able to communicate with HA (first idea was ecoflow but I read they cut off the ports?!) and has about 1 kwH and 3000 loading cycles and a manageable loading power
Plug a constant low energy consuming device to the powerstation (like our fridge f.e.) and run it on the ac port oh the powerstation
Feed the powerstation with non consumed PV energy whenever possible. If not available load the minimal grid power to run the device (which I would need than anyway)
Be happy to store some left over power for a device and have a powerstation whenever I need it.

Anybody tried or created this? Or is that a super-dumb idea? (I’m scare it’s not necessary cost-efficient)

Regards
Philipp

ol_i · January 4, 2023, 10:05pm

I’m interested in something like that as well, even though I’m pretty sure it won’t amortize in my case: I only have 720WP solar panels and will ever have max. 1 kWh per day (in the very best case) that I could put into the powerstation. Seeing that power stations don’t start under 1000€ it’s not going to pay off - but I still like the idea.
I’m already monitoring my total consumption and solar production and if someone has a working setup I would definitely like to add a battery in the mix.
Unfortunately, in all the powerstation tests nobody ever talks about API controllability etc.

adooze · January 11, 2023, 7:22am

I couldn’t find anything like that yet. If you do, please let me know!

Regards

TrilIiard · March 31, 2023, 12:44pm

First things you need are monitoring your Solar input and your energy consumption. It doesnt matter if you Monitor every Single device or your total live energy consumption, if you have every single device like i do just sum their consumption with a group helper. Now you should have one entity showing your total consumption and one for whats produced by your Solar setup.

Now you need to make a new entity via configuration.yaml thats substracting the two entities consumption and production. That looks sonething like this:

sensor:
  - platform: template
    sensors:
        available_solar_power:
            friendly_name: "Überschuss"
            unique_id: "available_solar_power"
            unit_of_measurement: 'W'
            device_class: "power"
            value_template: "{{ states('sensor.solar_current_production') |float - states('sensor.current_total_consumption') | float }}"

With this sensor you can allways see how much Solar Power is available for charging something and you are able to do it with an automation.

Next you need to have a Powerstation thats able to turn ac Charging on and off or you need to have a Wifi/zigbee/matter/whatever controlled socket to turn it on and off with Home assistant.

From here on you can go two ways:

If you have a simple (usually very small ones) Powerstation that doesnt have network connection you can connect it to a socket with a Wifi switch and energy monitoring to control it with Home assistant and just turn it on and off depending on the available Solar Power for an automation you just need to know how much energy your Powerstation can charge with. If your Powerstation supports multiple Inputs with different maximum speed you could setup two Wifi sockets for slow and fast Charging like one AC and one USB.
For Powerstations with network connection it can be much more complicated to setup but you gone have much more control. I can only help out for ecoflow Powerstations and it does only work through ecoflow mqtt cloud server.

You need to have your ecoflow device connected to Home assistant and there are several ways of achiving this like:

The second one also works for their new 2 Series, i have a River 2 Max. But you can also do it yourself with help of the many many posts in this thread here:

github.com/v1ckxy/ecoflow-withoutflow

Commands

opened 04:49PM - 20 Mar 22 UTC

mattwells

A few things having done some digging myself. Port 6093 seems to have someth…ing to do with upgrading firmware, perhaps the reason it leaves offline mode is because it is preparing to receive an update? There are a few method that have peeked my interest: - `BleCommand.setMainsParam` and `DirectDeviceCommand.setDcInputMode` I am really hoping that this will allow control over charging from the mains (e.g. on/off), but it seems to be used to set the voltage and fequency so I am guessing that wont be the case. - `BleCommand.setEspMode` this appears to send a boolean value, perhaps turn on the ability to debug or flash the ESP module? - `BleCommand.sendBmsDataCommand`, `DirectTcpManager.getBmsDataBytes` and `DirectTcpManager.getBmsSDataBytes` it would be really nice if the BMS exposes information about each cell in the power station There are a few methods around MQTT which suggests that it could be configured to push information to an MQTT server, maybe this is how they are getting the graphs in the mobile app for charge and discharge? Unless it is a typo for MPPT ### com.ecoflow.common.command.BleCommand The first param `str` in all of these methods appears to be the address of the device. - public void getCpuId(String str, int i) - public void getSn(String str, int i) - public void getWifiListCommand(String str, int i) - public void setHostCommand(String str, String str2, int i) - public void setHostCommand(String str, String str2) - public void getName(String str, int i) - public void setNameCommand(String str, String str2, int i) - public void setBCNameCommand(String str, String str2) - public void getWifiInfo(String str) - public void getIsDormancyCommand(String str) - public void sendPdCommand(String str) - public void sendEmsDataCommand(String str) - public void sendBmsDataCommand(String str) - public void sendInvDataCommand(String str) - public void sendMpptDataCommand(String str) - public void getCarChargerInputCommand(String str) - public void sendNotifyCommand(String str) - public void sendMinDsgSocCommand(String str, int i) - public void sendUpsCommand(String str, int i, int i2, int i3) - public void sendScWattsCommand(String str, int i) - public void sendAcCommand(String str, int i, int i2) - public void sendXBootCommand(String str, int i) - public void sendDcCommand(String str, int i, int i2, int i3) - public void sendSystemStandCommand(String str, int i) - public void sendLcdCommand(String str, int i, int i2, int i3) - public void sendBuzzerCommand(String str, int i) - public void sendLcdCommand(String str, int i) - public void sendResetCommand(String str) - public void sendCloseCommand(String str, int i) - public void sendCarChargerInputCommand(String str, int i) - public void sendAcOutFreqCommand(String str, int i) - public void sendPassword(String str, String str2) - public void getPassword(String str) - public void sendSilenceCharge(String str, boolean z, int i, int i2) - public void sendAcStandbyMinCommand(String str, int i) - public void sendOpenOilCommand(String str, int i, int i2, int i3) - public void sendCloseOilCommand(String str, int i, int i2, int i3) - public void mj100Reset(String str) - public void mj100DcOut(String str, int i) - public void mj100AcOutEnabled(String str, int i) - public void mj100AcOutXBoost(String str, int i) - public void mj100AcOutOutFreq(String str, int i) - public void mj100SetHvType(String str, int i) - public void mj100GetHvType(String str) - public void mj100SetStandBy(String str, int i) - public void mj100SmartProtection(String str, int i) - public void setMqttServer(String str, String str2, int i) - public void setMqttServerConfig(String str, String str2, String str3) - public void setMqttInfo(String str) - public void replayChannelPowerAck(String str, byte[] bArr, int i) - public void replyAck(String str, int i, int i2, int i3) - public void replyTimerTaskAck(String str, int i) - public void replyLogAck(String str, byte[] bArr, LogModItem logModItem) - public void replyHearBeat(String str, byte b, byte b2) - public void sendCFGPowerModeCommand(String str, byte[] bArr) - public void setAreaInfo(String str, String str2) - public void setMainsParam(String str, int i, int i2) - public void setEspMode(String str, boolean z) - public void setChannelCurrent(String str, int i, int i2) - public void setCfgSta(String str, int i) - public void setSplitPhase(String str, byte[] bArr) - public void setChannelEnableState(String str, int i, boolean z) - public void setChannelName(String str, int i, int i2, byte[] bArr) - public void getChannelInfo(String str) - public void setDischargeTime(String str, ByteBuffer byteBuffer) - public void setChargeTime(String str, ByteBuffer byteBuffer) - public void sendCHModeCommand(String str, int i, int i2, int i3) - public void setRestart(String str) - public void updateTime(String str, Date date) - public void setPowerStation(String str, int i, int i2, int i3) - public void setMH200DeviceName(String str, String str2) ### com.ecoflow.common.command.CommandUtil - public static int getSynchronousCmdSet(int i) - public static int getSynchronousDst(int i) - public static int getWifiListCmdId(int i) - public static int setHostCmdId(int i) - public static int setStaCmdId(int i) - public static byte[] CommandToByteArray(byte[] bArr, int i, int i2, int i3, int i4) - public static byte[] getAcPayLoad(int i, int i2) - public static int getAcDst(int i) - public static int getCmdSet(int i) - public static int getAcCmdId(int i) - public static int getDcDst(int i, int i2) - public static int getDcCmdSet(int i, int i2) - public static int getDcCmdId(int i, int i2) - public static byte[] getLcdSettingTime(int i, int i2, int i3) - public static int getDcInputModeDst(int i, int i2) - public static int getDcInputModeCmdSet(int i, int i2) - public static int setDcInputModeId(int i, int i2) - public static int getDcInputModeId(int i, int i2) - public static int getUpsDst(int i, int i2) - public static int getUpsCmdSet(int i, int i2) - public static int getUpsCmdId(int i, int i2) - public static int getCpuIdDst(int i) - public static int getSnDst(int i) - public static int getNameCmdSet(int i) - public static int getNameCmdId(int i) ### com.ecoflow.common.command.DirectDeviceCommand - public void getSnCommand() - public void setSnCommand(String str) - public void getCpuId() - public void sendSystemStandCommand(int i) - public void sendAcCommand(int i, int i2) - public void sendXBootCommand(int i) - public void sendAcOutFreqCommand(int i) - public void sendUsbCommand(int i) - public void sendBuzzerCommand(int i) - public void sendResetCommand() - public void sendCloseCommand(int i) - public void sendGetPdInfo() - public void sendLedCommand(int i) - public void sendDcCommand(int i, int i2, int i3) - public void sendLcdCommand(int i, int i2, int i3) - public void sendLcdCommand(int i) - public void sendAmbientModelCommand(int i) - public void setAmbientLightBrightnessCommand(int i) - public void setAnimationLightModeCommand(int i) - public void setAmbientLightColorCommand(int i) - public void setDcInputMode(int i, int i2, int i3) - public void getDcInputMode(int i, int i2) - public void sendUpsCommand(int i, int i2, int i3) - public void sendMinDsgSocCommand(int i, int i2, int i3) - public void sendCarChargerInputCommand(int i, int i2, int i3) - public void getCarChargerInputCommand(int i, int i2) - public void sendOpenOilCommand(int i, int i2, int i3) - public void sendCloseOilCommand(int i, int i2, int i3) - public void sendWattCommand(int i) - public void sendScWattsCommand(int i) - public void sendFanCommand(int i) - public void getFanCommand() - public void sendChgPauseCommand(int i) - public void sendAcStandbyMinCommand(int i) - public void sendSilenceCharge(boolean z, int i, int i2) - public void sendGetProduceInfo(int i) ### com.ecoflow.common.helper.DirectTcpManager - public void startConnect() - public void initSp() - public void startHeartBeat() - public void getSnData() - private void getMr500SnData() - public byte[] getLcdTimeData() - private void getMr500CpuId() - public byte[] getOilDataBytes() - public void notifyWillSetSta() - public byte[] getPdDataBytes() - public byte[] getEmsDataBytes() - public byte[] getBmsDataBytes() - public byte[] getBmsSDataBytes() - public byte[] getInvDataBytes() - public byte[] getMpptDataBytes() - public void sendData(byte[] bArr) - public DirectDeviceCommand getDirectDeviceCommand() - public void setUserDisconnect(boolean z)

or use his work that makes it much easier:

There are guides to setup your own mqtt broker for connecting to ecoflow Server and setup your own entities, if your device isnt supported by any of the above (or other HA) Addons or you just what to you can build your own software setup with these guides.

If you now have an entity for your available Solar Power and your Powerstation controlled through Home assistant its just a question of automation. I am not sure if there isnt a better way to Do it but this is what works for me. First automation:

alias: Charge River AC 50
description: ""
trigger:
  - platform: numeric_state
    entity_id: sensor.available_solar_power
    above: 65
condition:
  - condition: device
    type: is_off
    entity_id: switch.powerstation_ac
    domain: switch
action:
  - type: turn_on
    entity_id: switch.powerstation_ac
    domain: switch
  - domain: number
    entity_id: number.river_ac_charging_power
    type: set_value
    value: 50
mode: single

Second stage:

alias: Charge River AC 75
description: ""
trigger:
  - platform: numeric_state
    entity_id: sensor.available_solar_power
    above: 30
condition:
  - condition: state
    entity_id: switch.powerstation_ac
    state: "on"
  - condition: numeric_state
    entity_id: number.river_ac_charging_power
    below: 70
action:
  - domain: number
    entity_id: number.river_ac_charging_power
    type: set_value
    value: 75
mode: single

Third stage that is just repeating with higher values for higher charging speeds like 150,200,250,300 Watts and so on.:

alias: "Charge River AC 100 "
description: ""
trigger:
  - platform: numeric_state
    entity_id: sensor.available_solar_power
    above: 50
condition:
  - condition: device
    type: is_on
    entity_id: switch.powerstation_ac
    domain: switch
  - condition: numeric_state
    entity_id: number.river_ac_charging_power
    below: 100
    above: 70
action:
  - domain: number
    entity_id: number.river_ac_charging_power
    type: set_value
    value: 100
mode: single

For stopping charging:

alias: Charging River AC off
description: ""
trigger:
  - platform: numeric_state
    entity_id: sensor.available_solar_power
    below: "-1"
    for:
      hours: 0
      minutes: 0
      seconds: 12
condition: []
action:
  - type: turn_off
    entity_id: switch.powerstation_ac
    domain: switch
  - domain: number
    entity_id: number.river_ac_charging_power
    type: set_value
    value: 50
mode: single

You need to adjust the values to what values your Powerstation supports and change entities to yours, maybe add some delay here and there but it should work.

Tyfoon · April 2, 2023, 6:00pm

I’m controlling my Ecoflow Delta 2 via the cloud intergration. However the Delta 2 has a pass through mode. This sounds good as it avoid converting from AC to DC and the back again to power my constant load (in my case some IT stuff).

My idea was to have my load drain the battery when proces are high and then recharge the battery when proces are low incl . building some automations to do that.

The delta 2 has a ‘prioterise solar’ mode ‘switch’ which should allow you to remotely stop draining power from the mains (and drainthe battery) but I can’t get that to work properly.

Alternative would be to use a smartswitch but if that automation misses the battery has the risk of fully drain and then stop my devices connected to the Delta 2 and that is also a big risk.

So up till now, not a satisfactory solution unfortunately.

TrilIiard · April 4, 2023, 9:06am

Just use some conditions within the automation like “if Powerstation is over 75% dont use ac charging at all” or "if Powerstation Drops to 10% Start ac Charging with 100 watt“.

If you want to use electricity while its cheap you need to have an entity that reads the pricing live. And setup your automations depending on the price.

Amaizing that some people still think they dont need to use their own brain with smart homes. Its as easy as possible you just need to understand, and its all written down somewhere

Tyfoon · April 4, 2023, 11:27am

Thanks @TrilIiard but I have all of that. I have quite elaborate automations to defer power consumption based on hourly energy prices.

My question is about how to control the Delta 2 to stop/start charging from AC Power. I have found no entity that allows you to do that. The entities below refer to AC OUTPUT from the Ecoflow, not the input.

guizard · April 6, 2023, 3:50pm

That’s what i’m looking too. Is there anyway to say to the delta 2 if is low on battery to just power the devices in “bypass mode” and don’t recharge the battery?

guizard · April 20, 2023, 7:47am

HI solved enabling prior solar charging on the ecoflow. I charge my delta 2 when there is a surplus of energy from the solar panels. When there low or no production from the solar panel i turn off a shelly plug connected to the delta 2 so i forced it to switch to battery only. When on battery i drain it until reach 35% left. Then turn on prior solar charging and turn on the shelly plug. Doing this the battery operate as passthrough.