PVCharge

An adaptive charging controller for your Tesla, enabling you to direct excess solar energy to your car.

Requirements

• Tesla vehicle
• Configured Tesla Vehicle Command SDK environment with tesla-control available OR use the TeslaBleHttpProxy (NEW!)
• TeslaMate
• eGauge solar monitoring with a CT on the charger circuit
• Linux computer with Bluetooth, such as a Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W

Optional

• Home Assistant or another MQTT client to adjust the options for after-dark charging, and delayed charging
  
  

Tesla Vehicle Command SDK

PVCharge uses tesla-control in the Tesla Vehicle Command SDK to communicate with your car over local Bluetooth

Here are a few hints to help complete the tesla-control installation

Create the directory "keyrings" to hold your private key:
mkdir /home/pi/.local/share/keyrings

Setting the key:
tesla-keygen -key-file /home/pi/.local/share/keyrings/private_key.pem create > public_key.pem

While in the car, pair with this command:
tesla-control -ble add-key-request public_key.pem owner cloud_key

TeslaBleHttpProxy

To use TeslaBleHttpProxy (not required if you are using tesla-control), please follow the installation & configuration instructions here

• Add the PROXY_HOST parameter to your .env file (see example.env)
• Enable use of the proxy by adding the ENABLE_TESLA_PROXY parameter to your config.toml file (see example_config.toml)
  
• Note, when TeslaBleHttpProxy is running it seems to take over local bluetooth hardware. Please stop the proxy before switching back to the tesla-control library.

PVCharge Installation

• Install Python (3.11+) and Git using your package manager
  
• Clone the repo

  git clone https://github.com/sftman18/PVCharge.git

• In the PVCharge directory, configure the Python virtual environment and install the requirements

python -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate
pip install -r requirements.txt

Configuration

• Create your own copy of example.env, and example_config.toml

cp example.env .env
cp example_config.toml config.toml
Change all values to match your equipment settings and preferences

• Copy included PVCharge.service to the proper path (systemd shown)

sudo cp PVCharge.service /etc/systemd/system/

• Activate the service and start it:

sudo systemctl enable PVCharge.service
sudo systemctl start PVCharge.service

• Check to ensure it is running:

sudo systemctl status PVCharge.service

Usage

PVCharge waits for 3 conditions to be communicated over MQTT from Teslamate

• Car location is "Home" teslamate/cars/$car_id/geofence
• Car is plugged in teslamate/cars/$car_id/plugged_in
• Car battery level is below the App limit teslamate/cars/$car_id/battery_level
  

When those conditions are satisfied, it will attempt to start charging, when solar energy is available

As PV output changes throughout the day, charging rate will be adjusted to use the excess energy

Status

PVCharge publishes status on MQTT

• Charging report topic_base/status
• Current charge rate topic_base/new_charge_rate

Control

• The behavior of after-hours charging is controlled by MQTT: topic_base/prevent_non_solar_charging
  

True

PVCharge will prevent charging when insufficient PV output is available

False

PVCharge will ignore charging when insufficient PV output is available (default, Configurable in config.toml)

• The ability to delay charging is controlled by: topic_base/charge_delay
  

"delay"

charging is delayed for 1 hour

"##" (number)

charging is delayed by the indicated number of minutes

other text (i.e. "cancel")

resume normal charging

Troubleshooting

Enable more verbose logging by changing the LOG_LEVEL to DEBUG in config.toml

• Check PVCharge.log for any unexpected output

Screenshot of adaptive charging seen through eGauge