Charging your vehicle at home can put a heavy load on your electrical installation. With Solar charging, you make sure only the surplus export of your solar production is used to charge your vehicle, nothing more.

An electric vehicle always needs a minimum of 6A per phase to start charging. This isn't a Smappee or charging station limit. It's a fixed technical limit that applies to every EV, defined in the IEC 61851-1 charging standard, not something Smappee decides. Some numbers to make this concrete:

• Single-phase charging requires at least 6A or 1.4 kW.
• Three-phase charging requires at least 18A (3×6A) or ~4.2 kW (3×1.4 kW).

To help your EV start charging on solar surplus as soon as possible, Smappee offers two features:

• Automatic switching between single-phase and three-phase charging
• Grid support

Feature 1: Automatic phase switching

This feature makes the most of your self-generated solar power. The Smappee EV charger automatically switches from 3-phase to 1-phase charging when solar production drops to 6A or less per phase, and back up again when more solar surplus becomes available.

It's active in the Solar charging and Schedules and surplus smart charging modes.

Your EV can charge on both single phase and three phases. As solar production changes throughout the day, phase switching automatically adjusts to make the most of it:

Feature 2: Grid support

To start charging, an EV always needs at least 6A per phase. On solar surplus alone, your panels won't always reach that, especially on cloudy days or in winter. Without extra help, charging simply won't start.

Grid support solves this: it lets the charger draw part of that minimum current from the grid, so charging can start even when solar production alone isn't quite enough. The rest of the 6A still has to come from your solar surplus (export).

Formula (per phase): minimum solar export needed = 6A − Grid support (A)

Once charging has started, if solar surplus grows beyond the minimum needed, the system automatically shifts more of the load to solar and less to the grid. No need to adjust anything manually.

This is separate from the overload limit ("Maximum current") explained further down. Grid support only affects how easily your EV can start charging; the overload limit protects your whole electrical installation.

Before anything else, check the charging session status in the Dashboard or app. If the session shows Paused, it's usually related to solar surplus not (yet) reaching the required minimum. This is not a fault. A few things you can try:

1. Increase Grid support. A higher setting (in A) means less solar surplus is needed before charging starts, so the car charges more often, at the cost of using a bit more grid power.
2. Switch to Schedules and surplus. This mode optimises solar use across the day and tops up with grid power if needed to meet your schedule. Downside: solar production after the schedule ends won't be used for charging.
3. Ask your installer about detaching 2 phases on a three-phase installation cable. This lowers the minimum power threshold needed to start charging, so the car starts sooner on available solar, though maximum charging speed will be lower (usually not noticeable, since most EVs already cap around 11kW on three-phase anyway).

Example: it's a cloudy day and Grid support is set to 0A. Your EV then needs the full 6A from solar alone, so charging may not start. Temporarily increasing Grid support to, say, 4A lets the car start with only 2A of solar surplus.

Session status something other than Paused (for example an error/fault code, or "Charging ended")? That's not related to Solar charging logic. Check the relevant status or fault code instead, or contact support.