Hi folks! (intro thread)

Regional Discussions United Kingdom
#1

I’ll kick off… I’m in North London, I have a 19 panel install with micro-inverters over three aspects.

I would have had got a system installed on the last day, literally, of the high FiT rates in 2010 but after the guys were on-site and already at work it was found that the roof tiles had almost all blown and were too fragile to install onto safely. I spent that money instead on a new roof (tiles only, luckily, as the rest was fine).

Once I went for a PHEV I decided to get a system installed at the same time as my car EVSE in 2015. It’s been better and worse than I thought, and having a system to monitor it all has made a big difference. Over the last couple of months I’ve finally got around to controlling the EVSE to divert spare solar when not requiring a full rate charge. Working well after some false starts.

#2

Hi. Forgive my ignorance but what is an EVSE?
I also have a PHEV and I currently operate the charger manually when I expect good solar conditions (mainly summer), or after 8pm when I get a cheaper tariff (mainly winter), depending on when I expect to need the car next.
I have 80 panels making 20kWp which is somewhat overkill at this time of year but the extra ROCs and export revenue (I am in Northern Ireland) justified the larger array back in 2014 by shortening the payback on the grid connection cost at my new build rural home.

#3

EVSE is what most people think is the charger - the box on the wall (Electric Verhicle Supply Equipment) and it does the safety stuff with some, minimal, controls. A granny lead is also a portable EVSE is also the brick with the short mains cable :slight_smile:

Depending on the model of EVSE there may be a network or serial port through which you can control “stuff”. The standard based controls are documented here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAE_J1772 but the actual interface mechanism is always vendor specific.

With mine (an ABL Sursum model) I can very the advertised current down from a minimumj of 6A up by any increment of 0.06A - it’s the charger in the car that then sees this on the PWM (see above) link and draws a varying amount based on it.