Thanks for this and your previous one about the GE charge point. GE released a blog post a couple of days ago with a FAQ on the charger. It's on the GE website under the Company tab. GE is at the Solar and Storage event this week at the NEC so perhaps there will be some hardware announcements...
As they’re the headline sponsor at the event I suspect so too. There have been lots of social media posts from their staff teasing us with “big announcement soon”…
Many thanks for all your videos, I would never started my HA journey without then. I have one quer. Does anyone know what would trigger the EV Status to log SUSPENDEDEVSE, SUSPENDEDEV or FINISHING? As per the template code. My EV Status history only shows AVAILABLE, PREPARING & CHARGING?
Hi, do you know of any good consumer focused documentation for the GivEnergy EV charger that explains the settings and how they affect things ? I’ve just had a Giv EV charger installed, and having previously used an Ohme cable with multiple schedules setup to charge to 80% early morning on Octopus Go, topup in the evening for a 1-day a week evening trip, and at the weekend to a higher SOC for longer journeys, I’m really struggling to get to grips with the GivEnergy EV charger which only seems to allow one active schedule to be setup at any time, and also seems to want to constantly pull from the grid or drain the house battery rather than pulling excess from the solar panels even when setup for solar or hybrid modes. On the face of it, the options GivEnergy talk about it supporting sound ideal, but in practice I’m finding it seems to fall woefully short of the claimed flexibility and the customer documentation is either simply missing or almost impossible to track down.
I don’t know of any documentation. You are restricted to just one schedule, yes, and it will drain your battery if your battery is not set to charge at the same time. It really depends on how your electrician has wired the charger up in relation to those components. This isn’t specific to the GivEnergy charger though. If you have a GivEnergy battery too then ‘configuration D’ I think uses cloud connectivity to talk to the inverter and stop battery drain. Or you can have configuration C which uses an energy monitor to provide solar divert regardless of the solar inverter you have (that’s how mine works)
Another nice video, ive had to pause any sorting out of home assistant as im having massive battery issues, my AIO atm is down to less than half capacity and getting smaller.
@@SpeakToTheGeekTech Its in the long Battery Calibration thread, last nights flux charge put in 6.6kwh from flat to 100% and after waking up and charging back up what it used from solar its capacity is now 5.5. No rollback has been mentioned to me or performed. I am not on facebook.
Hello again, I wonder if firmware changes mean your code for EV Chargers now no longer fully works? I installed following your directions and code. I am in Solar Mode but the button does not show as active, indeed no mode button is shown as active. Also I notice the EV Mode shows as unknown and guess that is part of the same issue. What do you think?
I don’t have cloud API configuration for inverter control sorry, but have a look at the GivTCP add-on which lets you control the inverter totally locally. It is much easier to set up than creating lots of API entities
@@SpeakToTheGeekTech what happens to my 3 hour Flux period the night the clocks go forward? Do we loose an hour of cheap rate? Sunday 31st March this year
Going by the last time, yes you lose an hour. But if you’re still on the tariff 6 months later you get it back again when the clocks go back so it all evens itself out in the end
Yes, it's possible to do that but it involves grabbing the last charge session and subtracting the start reading from the final reading in a template sensor. I don't plan to play around figuring that out though, but all the data to do it is available :) beta.givenergy.cloud/docs/api/v1#ev-charger-charging-sessions
somewhat unrelated - i'm trying to use api control or givetcp to control my battery to force discharge at mightnight for an hour if the battery SOC > x. what would be the best way to approach this?
Should be easy enough with an automation that triggers at midnight and has a condition for the battery soc being above a certain percentage. The action would need to set a specific set value for the force discharge“select” entity for 60 minutes.
@@SpeakToTheGeekTech thanks i have givetcp for reading values but i can't seem to be able to 'set' values.. i was going down the road of this video.. and added the api key to secrets etc.. but then noticed the code is for the ev charger.. re the api calls.. i don't want to clog up your comments
@@GilbertP57 I got it working with givetcp and force export. Using an automation I check battery soc and if it's above a value I set it to discharge for 60 minutes. You can choose what time you want from 2 minutes to 180 I think. I also check the pv forecast before discharge. Idea is dump about 3 kWh and get 25 cents per kWh and I can fill my battery then at 5 cents kWh (Dublin)
No problem. I've managed to get the control of the LEDs into the config on my web site. Nice automation running at the moment turning them on when my Ring doorbell detects motion and off 5 minutes after motion was last detected. Saves them flashing away all night, they only need to be on if someone is there to look at them!
Thank you, your videos have been pivitol in my home assistant and GivEnergy journey. Do we know whether this remains the best option or is GivTCP now updated for the charger? I'm keen to use the Agile Target automation to charge my EV in the cheapest half hourly slots in the same way as my home battery (and hot water when price zero/negative) which has been working brilliantly. Also I'm experiencing around 100W-200W grid import when my car is charging from solar (when 1.4kW solar is achieved). Is this normal? I think its because of the minimum charge current for the car meaning that 1.4kW isnt quite enough to support home base load as well as minimum car charging. It would be nice to adjust up the solar minimum value if that theory is correct, or let the system determine the correct settings in real time.
I still use this cloud API method because the charger's firmware still hasn't been updated to resolve the bug that causes it to freeze when GivTCP is used. It's not a GivTCP fault to my knowledge but a charger firmware problem. As to your grid import issue, I don't experience that. If I have the charger in solar mode then it'll only use solar provided there's enough excess, and it won't draw from the grid. The only time it draws from the grid is if it's in hybrid mode.
@@GilbertP57 I've not tried it yet but I have spoken to Paul from GivEnergy about the changes in the new version. The intention is that it does resolve the issue with GivTCP and other network stability bugs. It has made local communication off by default (for security reasons) but that can be enabled via the portal so as GivTCP can talk locally to it. It is definitely going to be worth another video when I've had chance to play and assess whether I think it's fixed. At the moment I'm still using the cloud API in this video and it's been extremely reliable. There are quirks when working locally, such as how charging modes are dealt with because they are names for bunches of settings (Hybrid/Grid/Solar) rather than being a specific local toggle.
@@lukegiles1803 That's the current public version but there is a newer version in test right now (1.24 I think, but don't quote me on that!). Hopefully it's due out any day.
Hi, I am confused by the API tokens. In June 2023, I generated a GE 'API key'. GE sent me the API key by email. I have used this key successfully for HA and for Octopus R&D labs to link my Inverter/Battery. Until recently, the API key section on Manage Account Security has been blank. Now, I have 2 API key descriptors in the section, oner labelled 'Octopus' which appears to be for my Tariff details, the other for Solcast. Neither API key is displayed. I do also have an entry under the 'Manage API token section, dated the same as when I set up my original GE API token. I have no idea what this is unless it is my original 'API key'. From this video, are you recommending to set up a specific 'API token' for different uses rather than an API key? You appear to be setting one token for the GE EV charger and there is another listed for home assistant. I can't find anything within the GE knowledge base, etc to explain what a token is! As there is now no button to generate an API key, are API Tokens the new way of doing things? Any chance of helping me out with this mystery. Thanks Rob.
API token, key, secret, they’re all terms for the same thing really. They’re just a long complex string of characters that is used to access your data so you must keep it a secret. You won’t see them in the portal once created as they are displayed one on creation. Early days GivEnergy tokens allowed access to everything but they’ve updated things so as permissions are more granular. I suggest creating a different token per use because then you can revoke them individually if you accidentally share it and limit the permissions each one has
@@GilbertP57 Not yet, I'm still using the Cloud API. There's still a bug in the EV charger firmware that I have which means it doesn't like talking locally and to the cloud at the same time. As soon as I get new firmware installed I'll test it again. The cloud method is surprisingly reliable actually, been a couple of blips but nothing drastic.
Yes, it's all in the API but you would need an automation in order to control the requests. I left that out of this guide for the sake of simplicity and to cover the most common functions but I might revisit it in the future if there's demand. So far only 2 people have mentioned this to me since I published the video.
Thanks. As a follow up my mode status has never worked and always shows "unknown" I have just used the code you posted, has the API endpoint changed for this status? - name: "GivEnergy EV Mode" unique_id: givenergy_ev_mode value_template: >- {% if value_json.data[0].active %} Solar {% elif value_json.data[1].active %} Hybrid {% elif value_json.data[2].active %} Grid {% else %} Unknown {% endif %}
@@SpeakToTheGeekTech My 'EV Mode' has also stayed at 'unknown'. I had my GE EV charger installed a week ago and followed your helpful instructions/pasted in code to set up in HA. The EV Energy and Status values are coming through so some aspects are working. Massive appreciation for your videos which have helped me set up HA so not wanting to come across as complaining
@ytdrg the same seems to be happening to mine too. I did recently find out that if you swicth modes (solar/hybrid/grid) then the charger will not work until you hard reset it. Apparently this will be fixed in a firmware update "coming soon". So while it would be great to monitor it, I would avoid having any automations that change the mode.
Does anybody know if it is possibke to set the charge current with a home assisatnt automation? My issue is that it is set to charge from excess solar, so when the charge command is used overnight it charges at whatever charge current was last used. I need to reset to full before overnight charging...
Yes it is but I haven't included those items in this tutorial because to make something nice and user friendly for numeric values / sliders is complex. (I'd need an automation just to manage keeping each slider HA in sync with the API queried values). If you wanted just a fire-and-forget solution that sends the value to the charger but never checks what it is then that's easier, you'd just need to create a new rest_command entity using information you'd have to search for in the GivEnergy API documentation.
