EV chargers › V2C › Trydan
Trydan
Trydan
V2C
Trydan
Trydan Pro
Overview › Power management

Introduction

A charger that charges your car on solar surplus has to be told what the house is doing: how much the panels are making, how much is going to or coming from the grid, and what the battery is doing.

SolarAssistant can send this data to the V2C Trydan. It publishes the solar, grid and battery power it reads from your inverter onto the three MQTT topics a Trydan subscribes to, and the charger regulates on those. This is especially useful where your inverter or grid meter is not supported by the V2C Trydan.

For now the charger decides how much to draw, and SolarAssistant only tells it what the house is doing. We plan to let SolarAssistant control the charging itself, so that your inverter and your car can be driven by the same automations. Keep an eye on the changelog for this and other enhancements.

Step 1 - Set up the SolarAssistant MQTT broker

Navigate to the "Configuration" tab and open Configure beside MQTT.

The MQTT Broker card on the configuration page, with the Configure button

Set a username and password, then save.

The Authentication section of the MQTT configuration page, with the username and password fields

Back on the "Configuration" tab, start MQTT.

The MQTT Broker card, with the Start button

Step 2 - Point the charger at SolarAssistant

In V2C Cloud, open e-Charger Settings and select Power control.

V2C Cloud's e-Charger Settings, with Power control selected

Under Load balancing configuration, fill in:

V2C Cloud's load balancing configuration, with the six fields to fill in numbered
  1. Type of charging management device: Inverter
  2. Your device: MQTT
  3. Your device's IP address: your SolarAssistant device's local IP, for example 192.168.1.10. It is shown under Network status on the "Configuration" tab
  4. Your device's port: 1883
  5. User to connect to broker: the username from step 1
  6. Password to connect to broker: the password from step 1

The topic fields are V2C's own defaults and what SolarAssistant publishes on, so leave them as they are. Enter them if they are blank: 

trydan_v2c_sun_power
trydan_v2c_grid_power
trydan_v2c_battery_power

This can also be set up from the V2C app - see V2C's MQTT protocol guide.

Step 3 - Choose a charging mode

The feed is what makes V2C's charge profiles with photovoltaic energy available to you. Set the mode in V2C Cloud or the V2C app - see V2C's power control guide.

SolarAssistant shows which mode is in force as Power control mode on the charger's status page.

The EV charger status page, with the Power control mode row

Troubleshooting

The username and password fields are greyed out

They cannot be changed while the broker is running. Stop MQTT, set them, then start it again.

The charger stops seeing SolarAssistant

Its IP address has probably changed. Set a static address for your SolarAssistant device in your router, then enter the new one in V2C Cloud. See the MQTT page for how to find it.

The status page shows "Charge profile" instead of a solar mode

A charger running a charge profile reports the profile rather than the mode its current slot applies, so the mode in force cannot be read back.