Introduction
Charging your vehicle at home can be quite taxing on the electrical installation. With Smappee smart charging with schedules, it is possible to optimize your charging sessions to charge as optimally as possible. This with the help of the Smappee automated system determining the best moments to charge.
Prerequisites
- A schedule must be programmed via the Smappee app. This can be done via the smart charging - schedule (and surplus) menu. How to activate, see here.
- in order to calculate the optimal moments to charge your vehicle, it is also very important that you input your tariffs in the app. More on this here.
- in order for smart charging via schedules to work optimally, a stable solar forecast will be required. The monitor can take up to 30 days in order to make a correct estimation. During these 30 days it might be possible that smart charging via schedules will not be fully optimised yet.
Please note that if there is no schedule detected within 24 hours in the future, then the car will be recharged at the maximum speed as if the charging station were configured to standard charging.
Features of smart charging - Schedules only
When smart charging - schedules only has been selected, you will notice the car will immediately start charging. This is normal behavior. During this time, the algorithm will detect the schedule to be completed.
- If a schedule has been detected, it will map out a charging schedule. This can take up to 1 minute and during this time the car will continue charging. Once the schedule has been mapped, either charging will be paused or charging speed will be reduced.
- If no schedule is detected, then the car will be recharged at the maximum speed as if the charging station were configured to standard charging as mentioned before.
Based on the number of KM you input and the time of day the charging schedule must be completed, the Smappee optimization algorithm will recalculate the number of KM into energy, using a conversion factor of 0.2 kWh/km. Note that this is a good estimation for most EVs but it may not be perfectly accurate depending on weather conditions and your driving style.
Once the required energy and remaining time is known, the optimization algorithm will determine the optimal periods to charge in the next 24 hours. This is based on a combination of data:
- Forecasted solar production and forecasted consumption
- Electricity tariffs input in the app.
- Live consumption and production.
This schedule is constantly adjusted in real-time based on the increased and decreases of live consumption and production. The algorithm will always favour the usage of excess solar energy. If it is not possible to fully charge the EV with only solar energy, it will use energy from the grid but at the cheapest possible tariff. In any case, the priority is to always deliver the requested energy so that the driver is never left with an empty battery.
Smart charging will be somewhat less accurate during the first few days after installation of the Smappee system. During this time, the system is still learning about your energy usage and hasn't yet had enough time to correctly estimate the production and consumption forecast.
Features of Smart charging - Schedules and surplus
This setting is somewhat of a marriage between smart charging - schedules and smart charging - solar only.
At first, the charging station will recharge the vehicle based on the programmed schedule (see features of smart charging - schedules only).
When the schedule has been completed, the charging station will then continue charging the car but only with the surplus export of solar production.
All the same functionality as described in the smart charging - solar only article is offered here. This includes dynamic phase switching and the surplus percentage slider.