Zappi, Tesla, sunshine... and a bit of Home Assistant! 

Yes, there's a slider in the app to change the percentage. You can perhaps see it if you manage to stop the video at 12:42. It's not very well labelled on the screen, though; you have to know what it's for!

Hi Mike - if you can get those tariffs, then yes! When I first got this installed, my off-peak rate was 10p and my export rate was 5p. Now, I pay 9p for off-peak and get 8p for export, so there's less value in things like diverting power to my car or immersion heater, but still a very little bit. But I don't regret having the flexibility to do that, because Octopus have various special deals here where they'll sometimes give you free power for a couple of hours on windy days (I'm in one of those 'Power Ups' right now, so everything's charging and heating!) and other 'Saving sessions' where the grid load is high and you can get £2 or more per kWh if you can export. To make best use of these, of course, does require a certain amount of automation... I must do another video soon!

Hi Ken - Yes, that's quite appealing, isn't it? But I think the main limitation would be that, unlike dumb chargers, the Zappi is not just an on/off switch: it can provide variable charging rates. This is important when you want only to use your excess solar, for example, rather than the full 7kW. (I think I talk about the same issue with the Eddi immersion-heater controller in one of my other videos: it's basically a big dimmer switch!) So, for example, as the clouds pass over the sun, or as I briefly consume lots of power elsewhere to make a cup of tea, the Zappi can increase, reduce or stop the charging and then restart it again afterwards. Through Home Assistant, I do have some visibility of things like the Tesla state of charge, and I also have a certain amount of control over the charging rate through the current that the car is set to draw from the supply, but it's not nearly as much control as the Zappi gives, and (because it depends on when the car happens to talk to the cloud), these things can't be monitored or updated very promptly or frequently. Now, if I wanted a bigger project, I could probably build something interesting around OpenEVSE, and control it locally... 🙂 Q

​@@quentinsf Aha, OpenEVSE, now you're talking. 😀 The one EVSE I have already installed is one of those. How well can those be integrated into HA? I am in the process of looking into all this and not got there yet. The trouble with using the EVSE for any of this, like schedules etc is that it gets problematic with more than one EVSE. You end up having to set them all up individually, and then any modifications to the setup have to be duplicated to each and so on. If you want any variation to suit different cars, that would have to be locked in to the EVSE. So each car would always have to connect to a specific EVSE which is not great IMO and certainly not how I want it. So I really want dumb EVSEs, all controlled from HA. Schedules set up only once in HA and then ideally be able to detect which car was connected to which EVSE and apply the correct schedule to suit the car. Would like to also use HA to handle solar, batteries etc. but that may well require a proprietary app. 😕 Basically, I want HA to control everything as it's one interface to deal with and I get control over how that interface appears and operates. Also, it is NOT dependent on Internet connectivity. Not that I have a problem with my Internet connection (FTTP is fantastic), but I don't want to be reliant on anyone else's servers controlling my home. They do NOT have my best interests at heart and can introduce unwanted changes, change their mind about ongoing support or even go out of business at any time. I'm not yet sure about which EVSE is best suited for that though.

Hi - yes, you could do quite a lot that way, but it has some challenges too. Have a look at the comment by @UKenGB earlier and my responses. It would be interesting to try, though...

Hi there - sorry for the delay - I've been away for a bit! Lots of questions there... a few quick answers: Yes, if you have a scheduled boost at night, you can still do a manual boost during the day. I do that sometimes because the four hours of cheap power I have scheduled is only enough for about a third of a full recharge. If I need to top up more than about 100 miles in one night, I use a boost as well. You can get key fobs for the Tesla; I'm not sure if they'll unlock the charge port. If you have an actual Tesla charger, there's a button on the charging cable handle that opens the port. And it's possible to get the electronics from a third party which will do the same thing, if you want to build it into a handle of your own. Personally, I use my phone, but via a widget on the control panel that makes it very quick to do. And yes, I do have a battery in the house that I charge up each night on the cheap power, and a combination of that and solar normally gets me through the day. If you're keen you can see more about my overall system here: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-Tig35HCLt-s.html All the best, Quentin

Hi Nik - This is one of the reasons I've stuck to Octopus Go - the Intelligent stuff gets quite hard to manage! And I don't know enough about the Powerwall to know what's possible there, I'm afraid. I DO have a video explaining how I wired my system to avoid this, if that's at all relevant for your system? ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-iyPyXfsN6w0.html Quentin

It does go via the cloud, sadly. But otherwise works well. More details here: github.com/cjne/ha-myenergi

Hi Arthur - I'm using this one: github.com/alandtse/tesla/ It's worth noting that lots of people do use Node-Red with Home Assistant; it's an easy-to-configure add-on, if you prefer writing automations that way, and I think it's pretty well integrated with the various entities that HA provides. Q

Ah - that's a very good question... It would be hard to do AUTOMATICALLY if you're using the Zappi the way I'm using it. I have a scheduled boost in the middle of the night, and my Zappi is in ECO+ mode so it's effectively off at other times, unless there's excess solar. You'd need to tell the car to preheat the battery, and make sure the Zappi was supplying power at the same time... but you can only set one Scheduled boost time per day on the Zappi. So if you're already using that in the middle of the night, you can't also have, say, an early morning boost to coincide with your preheating. In my case, I could script it using Home Assistant -- switching the Zappi into Fast Mode at the right time and then reverting to ECO+ at other times. Otherwise, I think you might have to leave the Zappi in Fast mode and rely on scheduling in the car... but that does mean you can't take such good advantage of excess solar if you have it.

Thanks Alan - glad you like it. Yes, I do have batteries, and my configuration doesn't directly affect how the Zappi works -- it can, if you have an AC-coupled battery, but I don't. It did, however, affect how I wired the house up. There's more info here if wanted: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-iyPyXfsN6w0.html and if you're really keen, a detailed description of my overall installation here: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-Tig35HCLt-s.htmlsi=F8rrwEIMFR9_dtWm All the best, Quentin

Hi Roger - well, that's certainly possible, but in general I don't want to do that, because the car battery is a lot bigger than the house battery, so you could easily drain the house while charging the car and leave nothing for the house to use. How easy it is to control this depends a lot on your system, but if you're interested, I made a video about how I avoid this on my system here: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-iyPyXfsN6w0.html And there's a more general introduction to my whole installation here: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-Tig35HCLt-s.html Hope those help a bit! Quentin

Hi I have the same set up and find that during Off peak at night the charger will not add charge even when it’s set to scheduled boost during Off peak. It states “charge delayed” on the zappi. This is the same even if set to fast or eco+ modes? Any ideas? Thanks.

Hi - yes, this is a challenge, and there are a couple of different ways you can deal with it. The way I did it was to have the charger (or the whole garage, in my case) split off the incoming supply BEFORE the whole world that the inverter knows about. So when the inverter thinks it is exporting to the grid, it's actually exporting to the-garage-plus-the-grid! (The CT clamp for the inverter is not on the actual incoming supply; it's on the supply after the garage has been split off.) The inverter is configured never to export battery to the grid, so it also never exports it to the garage. It will, however, export excess solar. The Zappa's CT monitors the whole house *including* the garage, so it knows when I'm *really* exporting to the grid, and can kick in to capture the excess solar. This works well, though it has two downsides you should know about: the first is that it may require some re-wiring. That was easy in my case because the garage was on a separate breaker on the main board and the installers could just shift some wires about. Also, if I want to change the way I do this in future, I can just shift the relevant CT clamps. The second downside is that if you have a restriction on the amount of solar you can export - here in the UK the default is typically 3.6kW - and that's programmed into the inverter , then that's also the max your inverter will export to the garage, so you can't charge your car *from solar* faster than that, even if you have more excess solar available. (I got my limit increased to 5kW for this reason). Hope this helps - I should write a blog post about this since you're not the first to ask! But this might also help: support.myenergi.com/hc/en-gb/articles/10066139366161-Hybrid-Battery-Installation-Alternative-Connection-Arrangements Quentin

Very happy to, in theory, though it's all rather specific to my system - I have an early version on github but it's very out of date. Will try to fix that soon and post back here...

That would be fantastic to have as a starting point@@quentinsf! Much appreciated!

And I have a blue Tesla too 😮

Hi Thomas - well, you should check with an electrician, but in general I would expect the Zappi to work fine with the existing cabling - mine did! (The v2 Zappi also has some circuitry which means that, unlike many chargers, it doesn't need a special earthing stake.) So I'd be surprised if you needed new wires. Best, Quentin

There’s a Myenergi plugin at github.com/CJNE/ha-myenergi Sorry - away from base at present but will dig out other stuff in a couple of weeks. Quentin

@@quentinsf Very interesting and informative. I've just installed Home Assistant with the MyEnergi plugin and would be very keen to be enlightened with your impressive dashboard and the scripts which make it all work. I'm finding it extremely slow progress trying to make the plugin of real use in HA. Thanks. Bill

It's worth noting that the bits where I show HA controlling the target charging levels are interactions with the Tesla, though, not the Zappi...

@@quentinsf Ah. Ta for that. I'm not sure there is any way for HA to interact with my Hyundai Ioniq.

@@billmarsden8602 There seems to be some work going on - a quick Google took me to this: community.home-assistant.io/t/hyundai-bluelink-integration/319129

Hi Paul - good question, but no, the Zappi doesn’t know anything about how much charge the car has (unlike rapid chargers, which can find out the percentage). So it can control how much it’s adding, but it doesn’t know the starting point. I could automate that in Home Assistant, if I knew that I wanted the car charged to 85%, say, but I haven’t tried because the reports I get from the Tesla into HA about charging status don’t update very frequently or reliably. If either of them provided a good non-cloud API with more regular updates, things might be different! Best, Q

@@quentinsf thank you so much, super clear.

Oh, and just to clarify, the *scheduled* boost on the Zappi sets an amount of *time*, not an amount of charge to add.