OpenEVSE - Electric Vehicle Charging Solutions

OpenEVSE provides electric vehicle charging solutions worldwide based on SAE J1772 and IEC 61851 standards. Our experts provide components, software and services to accelerate the development of new charging technologies.

openevse.com

 

There are open source hardware options, like OpenEVSE mentioend above, plus there are hardware options that can very easily be controlled using home automation systems like Home Assistant with ESPHome (open source). Ecoharmony (member here) make controllers than can very easily be integrated into any open source control system. I have one of their earlier EVSE modules, that only has control via an analogue connection. I control it with an ESP8266 and a D to A converter and that allows the charge point to be turned on and off and the charge current to be controlled on the fly very easily. The ESP8266 is running ESPHome and connects seamlessly to Home Assistant, so putting together your own preferred automation to control the charge point is pretty easy - no coding needed.

I have mine set with the option of timed charging, to fit in with the off-peak periods, and solar charging, that optimises any excess PV generation, a bit like the Zappi. I also used to use the state of charge of the battery in the I Pace as a way to set charge limits (to avoid always charging to 100%) but JLR decided to stop any third party access via their API to block this (one reason I got rid of that car).

There are a lot of people developing their own solutions, Github seems awash with them, but I've found Home Assistant and ESPHome to be very well supported by the community and there are more and more manufacturers including Home Assistant integrations as an option, so my guess is that it won't be long before we have more charge point integration options. One major problem is that these are potentially illegal in the UK, because of the way the smart charge point regulations are framed.

The government does not want people to have total local control of their charge points, they want them to be able to be controlled by the electricity distribution network. Right now there's enough wiggle room in the regulations to disable this functionality without fear of redress, but if I had to guess then I'd say that the regulations might well get tightened if this becomes a widespread thing. Of course, charge point manufacturers choosing to deliberately turn off the government-mandated smart functionality could be one of the trigger factors for tightening the legislation.

 

The government want them to be able to be controlled by the electricity distribution network.

TBH I think this is a good thing. Assuming this is about reducing or pause charging so that demand can be reduced during demand spikes, also possibly about turning on the sink to soak up excess renewable. Slightly longer charge time in return for vastly less infrastructure investment and thus cheaper running cost for all. Slower AC destination EV charging is not time critical, so let's use that flexibility.

But I'm all for OP's desire to get away from manufacturer limitations. Localised user control is highly desirable even if you don't use it or understand it now. There's no telling if/when the manufacturer goes under and makes your EVSE an ugly decorative piece.

 

I get it, my MY LR also only charges ~50% dumbly over 6 hours IOG period. But that only affects people who drive more than 150 miles back to back. It's going to affect a very small minority.

The other way is also possible, people plug-in every day and not charge. There is excess renewables so grid operator gets lots of EV to charge a little bit cheaply soaking up those excess. A better, more wide spread IOG.

Of course, it's all theoretical and no official plan is in place at the moment. My point is only that we can charge more smartly rather than more infrastructure investment.

 

I get it, my MY LR also only charges ~50% dumbly over 6 hours IOG period. But that only affects people who drive more than 150 miles back to back. It's going to affect a very small minority.

The other way is also possible, people plug-in every day and not charge. There is excess renewables so grid operator gets lots of EV to charge a little bit cheaply soaking up those excess. A better, more wide spread IOG.

Of course, it's all theoretical and no official plan is in place at the moment. My point is only that we can charge more smartly rather than more infrastructure investment.

The issue for me is that the only time I've needed to get as much in the car as possible at a designated time was when a very close relative was terminally ill. If I'd not been able to make a trip because of some government edict I'd have been more than a little irritated.

As it happens this isn't likely to happen as there is simply zero need for it. Even if every car in the UK turned electric overnight the impact on the grid would be small, perhaps around 10%. Given that demand varies between night and day by many times that, every single day of the week, the added variability from EVs is so small as to not be worth bothering about. There are massively bigger demand changes than EV charging, like those associated with major sporting events. The power drawn during things like half time at major football games, from all the big water pumps that have to turn on to supply the sudden extra demand from toilet flushing is more of a problem, and one reason why water companies often offload the grid demand to their own generators for big events (plus they effectively get paid for peak lopping as well).

 

Perhaps another possible approach might be to get one that supports https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Charge_Point_Protocol, and then point it at your own server, of which there seem to be several open-source offerings.

 

Indeed, that's another way to do it; but the issue here is that a lot of off-the-shelf chargepoints are actually really difficult to configure to point to an OCPP server of your choice, and some of them don't even do OCPP natively, but rely on the manufacturer's systems to actually integrate with the standard OCPP protocol, which negates the reason for having local control in the first place.

 

Just been digging around and this charge point from Keba: eMobility | Charging the future has an integration available for Home Assistant: Keba Charging Station

Haven't delved into the nitty gritty, but it looks very much as if you can have full local control, with no need to use someone else's back end server. Because this allows variable charge current it should be pretty easy to put together custom automations to do what you want, say turn on when your electricity supplier price hits a certain point, or during a set time period. Also pretty straightforward to create an automation rule to do things like charge using excess PV generation.

 

Just been digging around and this charge point from Keba: eMobility | Charging the future has an integration available for Home Assistant: Keba Charging Station

Haven't delved into the nitty gritty, but it looks very much as if you can have full local control, with no need to use someone else's back end server. Because this allows variable charge current it should be pretty easy to put together custom automations to do what you want, say turn on when your electricity supplier price hits a certain point, or during a set time period. Also pretty straightforward to create an automation rule to do things like charge using excess PV generation.

That would work well on something like agile. My son who has solar, programmed a Raspberry Pi to control his solar export, if the price is too low it switches on his emersion heater to heat up his hot water.