I’ve had a solar system at home with a domestic storage battery for over a year with a Zappi2 charger for my La Prima.
My solar system includes a GiveEnergy Hybrid inverter and 8.2kWhr domestic battery.
The Eco+ mode of the Zappi is supposed to minimise grid consumption by pausing charging of the car if solar output drops or domestic load rises and to resume charging when solar or stored energy becomes available again. I’m finding though that charging often fails to resume automatically and manual intervention is needed.
I’m also finding if the Zappi is set to Eco that the domestic battery can become drained.
My attempts to change parameters on the Zappi to overcome these issues have failed.
Also I find the Fiat iPhone app often doesn’t display up-to-date data for the car battery charge level.
HomeAssistant is a free smart home application which can be run on a home computer or Raspberry Pi or similar.
Recently, ‘wubbl0rz’ has developed ‘FiatChamp’, a HomeAssistant AddOn for capturing data from the 500e and controlling its charging. At first sight, ‘FiatChamp’ seems to do a better job than the Fiat app.
In short, I have set up my HomeAssistant to charge my La Prima:
I can control HomeAssistant’s car charging from my iPhone when the car is plugged in at home, but I’m away.
Anyone interested in more detail should send me a PM.
My solar system includes a GiveEnergy Hybrid inverter and 8.2kWhr domestic battery.
The Eco+ mode of the Zappi is supposed to minimise grid consumption by pausing charging of the car if solar output drops or domestic load rises and to resume charging when solar or stored energy becomes available again. I’m finding though that charging often fails to resume automatically and manual intervention is needed.
I’m also finding if the Zappi is set to Eco that the domestic battery can become drained.
My attempts to change parameters on the Zappi to overcome these issues have failed.
Also I find the Fiat iPhone app often doesn’t display up-to-date data for the car battery charge level.
HomeAssistant is a free smart home application which can be run on a home computer or Raspberry Pi or similar.
Recently, ‘wubbl0rz’ has developed ‘FiatChamp’, a HomeAssistant AddOn for capturing data from the 500e and controlling its charging. At first sight, ‘FiatChamp’ seems to do a better job than the Fiat app.
In short, I have set up my HomeAssistant to charge my La Prima:
- overnight using off peak grid energy up to a State of Charge percentage I set.
- if in daytime the domestic battery’s State of Charge exceeds a threshold I set and to stop charging when the domestic battery SoC drops below a second .
Anyone interested in more detail should send me a PM.
