I’d almost always favor wired over wireless connections. Stable, reliable. Wireless is only an option for very low prio and not critical components.
E.g. Irrigation control is something I’d never do unwired. But for heating valves wireless is often the only solution. Depends on your infrastructure possibilities.
But maybe I’m old school here and lucky to have this option.
What we as technically skilled people often forget:
Maintenance in case we are no longer able to do it on our own. For that reason I headed for knx instead of Zigbee as the backbone of my house.
When things run autonomous for over a decade you see the benefits. - > Happy wife…
Coming back to the charger.
Obviously there are other options out there and the license topic should not be underestimated.
I might have taken a cheaper one but this was the option given by the employer.
On the other hand the box is a very stable offering, giving options for RFID, 22kW, load balancing, central management, build in meter etc.
Firmware updates run smoothly.
Seen no issues yet, runs stable (we charge more than one car and from different vendors)
But I understand (and usually follow that road if I have options) that having open connectivity in devices is a major benefit.
What I would really do first is to have a look at available integration options into the existing infrastructure instead of hoping to be able to get the bits together after I already bought hardware.
Having a running OH and PV available evcc was the my preferred software, easy to configure, integrates well, good UI out of the box. Does talk to many boxes, cars and PV components as well as openHAB and others.
Markus solution based on openHAB is a very good option in case you prefer a complete OS solution in a single box and you get much more than just control over your wall box.
Other option is to take the box from the PV vendor - works usually well, but is often a closed system.
In the end it depends on how much effort you want to put into this from time and monetary perspective for setup and maintenance. You have to find your sweet spot on that.
Being asked initially on a box fulfilling the requirements given the Alfen was mentioned by me as one option only (including mentioning the license required).
Sure, but especially for a charger (which even still has local control ability to take over should WiFi go down) connectivity is not critical so it shouldn’t limit your choices.
My EMS, too, includes and makes use of an evcc instance for the EV charging part.
Even I wouldn’t bother programming that stuff myself.
Very bad price-performance ratio, isn’t it.
I received my Alfen charger on Friday, finally. Both Alfen and my reseller screwed up my order.
The Alfen charger seems to be working better than ABB Terra with my BMW i4. I had difficulties with a single phase cable with ABB but Alfen seems to be working reliably. The reason for using single phase cable was that I wanted to optimize the usage of PV electricity and my previous PV system was only 3.4kW. Now I have 6.4kW PV system so I can use the 3 phase cable.
Scheduling also works very well but I struggled with the ABB. Android app is also much better than ABB’s app.
It seems that the Alfen apps work only in my own home network. If I wanted to use them outside my home network, which ports I would need to open in the firewall? I know this is a potential safety risk.
So far so good. I need to order the active balancing license. One thing which really annoys me is that my Alfen should be 22kW box but it is 11kW so I would need to buy another license for upgrading the max output power. OK, my i4 can take only 11kW but my next car in the future could have 22kW charging capability.
Hello, i’m quite new in the EV Charging world but looking for the same. What about the go-e Charger Gemini? It has a binding go-e Charger - Bindings | openHAB
I’m now testing the Modbus TCP on my Alfen charger. I can change the Modbus Slave Max Current which is in MB registers 1210-1211 with OH. When I connect the charging cable to the charger and to my car charging starts immediately. Basically I want to to use excess PV power to charge my car so I want to stop charging when connecting the cable either with MyEve or BMW app. The problem now is how to start charging especially when I’m not at home and when there is enough excess PV power. In addition, when there is not enough excess PV power charging needs to be stopped. It seems that there are no MB registers for starting/stopping the charging. Any ideas how to start and stop charging?
Have you tried evcc (evcc.io)? This is exactly doing what you want to achieve (plus much more).
You can install it in openhabian, for Alfen you require to have a sponsor token in evcc.
I didn’t mention in my previous post that I’m going to use my programmable controller for adjusting the charging current. I’m going to setup a PID controller which then adjusts the charging current so that excess PV power is minimised.
