Emporia EVSE

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Daklein

Well-known member
Joined
Sep 6, 2019
Messages
103
Location
Hartland, MI
I recently got an Emporia EVSE. I've always wanted an OpenEVSE for the control flexibility to integrate with home excess solar, but the power company rebates would only cover a couple of really expensive home EVSEs that they could manipulate (Chargepoint and something else).

Recently the power company opened their rebates to most any EVSE that's Energy Star rated and the Emporia was on their list, awesome, $500 rebate more than covers the Emporia, and the Vue power monitoring system is reasonably priced. It can be wired for up to 48A charging (60A breaker).

With the Vue power monitor, they have an excess solar function to control the EVSE. And, there's an open source package to control it, PyEmVue which piggybacks on Emporia's cloud, but at least it works and I can hook it into my other home automation & solar controls.

So, one minor issue so far. When I turn off the EVSE remotely (from the phone app, or with PyEmVue), the EVSE beeps and comes up with an error, during the time that the Leaf is waiting with contactors still closed, in case power comes back. When the Leaf gives up after about 5 minutes, then the beeping stops and the error goes away.

It says: Abnormal control pilot circuit. Unplug and plug-in Emporia EV Charger.

Has anyone seen this with your Leaf and an Emporia EVSE? Emporia support is looking at it, I think it must be the EVSE. Thanks!
 
Daklein said:
So, one minor issue so far. When I turn off the EVSE remotely (from the phone app, or with PyEmVue), the EVSE beeps and comes up with an error, during the time that the Leaf is waiting with contactors still closed, in case power comes back. When the Leaf gives up after about 5 minutes, then the beeping stops and the error goes away.

It says: Abnormal control pilot circuit. Unplug and plug-in Emporia EV Charger.

Has anyone seen this with your Leaf and an Emporia EVSE? Emporia support is looking at it, I think it must be the EVSE. Thanks!
When you say turn off remotely, do you mean it's charging and you stop the charge on the app?

If that's the case, I didn't have any problems doing that when I had the Leaf for 3 months. I think I only stopped the charge a few times and never got any errors.

I think someone else on the forum is having a problem with the pilot signal using a different EVSE.
 
I have the Emporia EVSE and I often use the schedule feature to to stop charging. Occasionally I use the pause button as well. I have never had a problem reported doing either of these things.
 
Thanks for the feedback. Emporia has sent a replacement and I'll swap it out one of these days. Other people not having trouble with Leafs, so maybe it's an EVSE hardware issue. My Leaf does also have a battery pack upgrade and the CAN bridge for it. The bridge does have some charge rate and charge ending features, but those use CAN messages within the car to make the PDM control the L2 lines, the L2 charging is only analog, not CAN. No other EVSEs have been an issue, but I've never used any that would be stopping and starting in this way.

Anyway, I have made my raspberry pi controls so it's not a huge problem, and this sort of behavior is for the best anyway: We wait for there to be excess solar for some time before first turning on, and stay on longer at the end also. Since I've done that, it only beeps at the end of the day when it should be unplugged anyway; It's a feature! Regardless, It's really great to have the EVSE automatically adjusting the charge rate for the off-grid system.

Here's a picture of my dashboard for the system, from yesterday with the EVSE working.
https://photos.app.goo.gl/1eYsi3Q7qLrK1rEe7

The red line in top plot is the EVSE charge amps command. After 11am it starts up and modulates up, I had plugged the car in earlier. The EVSE is wired on a 30A circuit, so it's set at 24A max current.

In the second plot, red is the main FLA battery current to the main SMA SunnyIsland inverters, and the goal is keeping it near zero. The yellow and green dash are the FLA battery voltage and target voltage.

Third plot shows the solar array power; green and yellow are AC coupled microinverter arrays, blue is a DC coupled array that charges a Lithium battery bank directly.
 
Update: the new EVSE does the same thing. Oh well. It's a feature, beeping to tell you it's done. I'm happy though for now, it's really great for the EVSE to automatically adjust the charging rate, just plug in and forget it. I hope the cloud service doesn't disappear, because I'm depending on that.
 
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