Solar Integrated Charging

[Ryan1T]

Lately I've been trying to time charging the Riv alongside the peak solar production on panels (peak output at 6kwh.) What I've been finding is that I can make sure I'm only using my excess solar production if I go into the truck and modify the charging speed to about 20amps, which gets me about 9mph charging, but I don't drive a ton and work from home, so I can manage, and really max out the cost benefits vs. selling back to the grid and then buying from the grid when charging at full 48amp speeds. Anyways, my point here is that playing around with this has given me a couple wishlist items for the Rivian app, and figured I would throw them out here to see if enough people agree (and maybe to put it on their radar.)

1. Modify charging speed from the app. This seems like a pretty reasonable ask, and then when I need to run another high draw appliance, or when it starts to get cloudy, I can just adjust down to my current level of solar excess production.

2. The longshot: Integration with solar monitoring apps (I use SolarEdge) so that the Rivian is adjusting it's power draw in real-time to match solar output, effectively making it into a backup battery.

What do you think, am I crazy, lazy, cheap, or something else entirely?

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[COdogman]

Great suggestions!

 

[CharonPDX]

At first, I thought you were going to suggest putting solar panels on the Rivian, and was going to have to break out the xkcd solar panels comic:

Thankfully, your request is much more reasonable. :-D

 

[fhteagle]

I have HomeAssistant controlling my OpenEVSE and Tesla to charge deeper and faster when solar + grid CO2 intensity are the most favorable. It also does charge timing and pre departure conditioning to meet irregular but known future departure times.

Also depends on what make and model your EVSE is and what kind of API based controls it has available.

EDIT, found an HA Integration for Rivian: https://github.com/bretterer/home-assistant-rivian
However, it only seems to have sensors, but not any controls to remotely adjust the car at all. Not sure if controls are in the works, hopefully so.


But if you're interested in going that route I can get off my lazy duff and write up a recipe for all the smarts.

 

[zefram47]

There are EVSEs that will do this automagically, but you'll probably need extra hardware to get the solar production visible to them. Look at Wallbox (Pulsar Plus) for an easier time of it, but there are also ways to make it work with OpenEVSE (way more difficult). They will monitor solar production and change the signal to the EV to match the allowed current.

 

[zefram47]

I have HomeAssistant controlling my OpenEVSE and Tesla to charge deeper and faster when solar + grid CO2 intensity are the most favorable. It also does charge timing and pre departure conditioning to meet irregular but known future departure times.

Also depends on what your charger is and what kind of API based controls it has available.

EDIT, found an HA Integration for Rivian: https://github.com/bretterer/home-assistant-rivian
However, it only seems to have sensors, but not any controls to remotely adjust the car at all. Not sure if controls are in the works, hopefully so.


But if you're interested in going that route I can get off my lazy Duff and write up a recipe for all the smarts.

Well shit...maybe I do need to look into HA now. My current EVSE is an OpenEVSE, but my solar was originally SolarCity and I don't believe there's easy access to the production data from the inverter. Unless HA has a plugin for that too.

 

[markp]

I'm not an expert on this, but I think it's better to control the charging rate from the EV charging station side of things. The station can integrate with inverters and the panel meter to adjust the charging speed based on solar output and total load. Or at least this is the sales pitch from Solar Edge: https://www.solaredge.com/en/products/residential/ev-charging. But regarding your original question, I agree that being able to adjust charging speed from the app would be a nice feature.

 

[krockett]

Agree, would be nice to adjust amp charge rate from app, Tesla has this capability.

That said, when at home, I just control the amperage and schedule from my EVSE, Wallbox Pulsar Plus.

 

[fhteagle]

Well shit...maybe I do need to look into HA now. My current EVSE is an OpenEVSE, but my solar was originally SolarCity and I don't believe there's easy access to the production data from the inverter. Unless HA has a plugin for that too.

I have seen HA integrations for SolarEdge, Sol-Ark/SunSynk/Deye, Growatt, Enphase maybe, and a few others. There are also raspberry pi based CANBUS and MODBUS reader options if your inverter has either of those outputs. ESPHome and others have standalone Current Transformer options to measure grid in/out and either give that to HA or directly to OpenEVSE...

 

[shandel]

Does your electricity provider have any type of net energy metering program? Here in CA we can send power to the grid at any time and use it at any time, netting out the difference at the end of the year. If that's an option then it wouldn't matter as much when you charge as long as you are producing enough energy.

 

[pc500]

I have HomeAssistant controlling my OpenEVSE and Tesla to charge deeper and faster when solar + grid CO2 intensity are the most favorable. It also does charge timing and pre departure conditioning to meet irregular but known future departure times.

Also depends on what make and model your EVSE is and what kind of API based controls it has available.

EDIT, found an HA Integration for Rivian: https://github.com/bretterer/home-assistant-rivian
However, it only seems to have sensors, but not any controls to remotely adjust the car at all. Not sure if controls are in the works, hopefully so.


But if you're interested in going that route I can get off my lazy duff and write up a recipe for all the smarts.

There's no API to adjust charging amperage remotely. Kind of stuck on this one without doing it at the charger level.

 

[Ryan1T]

Does your electricity provider have any type of net energy metering program? Here in CA we can send power to the grid at any time and use it at any time, netting out the difference at the end of the year. If that's an option then it wouldn't matter as much when you charge as long as you are producing enough energy.

We do have net metering, but the rates are favorable to the service provider, so I get paid less for the electric I'm feeding back than I pay for the stuff I'm taking when I have a higher need. Based on location I think I may be driving a nuclear powered truck if I just charge off the grid though, which sounds pretty badass?

 

[Ryan1T]

Thanks to everyone for the replies, sounds like HA (and maybe a smarter charger than the Rivian one I have) would work for the dream scenario. In the interim I'll hope one of the many Tesla programmers Rivian poached is planning to update the charging capabilities in the app.

 

[Madsen203]

Tesla has this capability already. Both sunshine charging and change amperage.

 

[MoreTrout]

Enphase's solution is due to be released next year. I did the sunlight backup when I installed my 8kW array last year so I would already have the hardware ready for any future battery back up with or without the EV and it should be a simple addition.

This is just the sample screenshot from their website. https://enphase.com/ev-chargers/bidirectional. Having the brains of the EVSE do this would be much easier than constantly adjusting from the truck side, even if it was available in the app. But, most of these solutions are a year or more away, so wouldn't hurt to have the ability if interested.

I kind of do what you do by manually starting and stopping charging during peak solar output, but at the end of the day with net metering even if I import my charge in the off hours, my peak hour excess just gets put back into the grid anyway letting someone else use the clean energy. PA may be behind the curve in a lot of energy policy (and will be for a LONG time), but at least for now they still have 100% net metering. And we have SRECs to boot. I'm sure there are already fossil fuel industry prostitutes in our state government already drawing up the plans to neuter it, but by then I should have my battery backup from either Enphase or the truck itself.

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