Common

With SolarManager you can automatically charge your Volkswagen ID car (e.g. ID.4) with solar electricity, even if your wallbox does not support this or is not that good in this. There are adapters for SolarEdge and Sonnen included but may be extended with another solar system easily.

It calculates from the current solar power, load and battery charge level if your car can be charged or not. If so it starts the charging process and if the sun goes down or you use more power for other things, it stops automatically. With the integrated web app you can see the logs of the current day and receive push notifications for different events.

The SolarManager is written in Python and uses WeConnect-python for the connection to the vehicle (ID.3, ID.4 and so on) and SolarEdge API or Sonnen API for getting information about current solar power.

Installation

Do the following to install it for example on a Raspberry Pi in headless mode:

1. Connect to your Raspberry Pi with a terminal console as user 'pi'.
2. Run sudo apt update.
3. Run sudo apt full-upgrade.
4. Run sudo apt install python3-pip.
5. Run pip install WeConnect-SolarManager.
6. Set needed configuration entries in /home/pi/.local/SolarManager/config.txt (see Needed configuration).
7. Run sudo python /home/pi/.local/SolarManager/init.py to install and start the service. A backup of your config file will be created automatically (see Update)
8. Open a browser and connect to your Raspberry Pi's IP on the configured port (e.g. https://192.168.0.3:5001) to check the logs at /home/pi/.local/SolarManager/logs if everything runs fine.

Update

To install an updated version of WeConnect-SolarManager, just run pip install WeConnect-SolarManager --upgrade. After that you have to restart the service by running sudo python /home/pi/.local/SolarManager/init.py again. Please note that with an upgrade the config.txt will be overwritten. You can copy this to a file config.txt.user, which will be used then. But in this case you have to care about new and changed settings by yourself.

Documentation

Configuration

In the config.txt file you find different entries you can or have to change.

Needed configuration

Section	Entry	Description
SolarManager	VIN	The vehicle identification number for the car you want to load with solar power. You find this in the WeConnect ID App in "My cars" view.
	DataSource	The data source you want to read solar data from. Currently there are data sources for "SolarEdge" and "Sonnen" available.
SolarEdge	ApiKey	Add the API-Key for getting data from your SolarEdge installation. You can get this in the Admin area in your SolarEdge-Monitoring-Plattform
	LocationId	Add the Location-ID for getting data from your SolarEdge installation. You can get this in the Admin area in your SolarEdge-Monitoring-Plattform
Sonnen	IP	The IP address where your Sonnen API is running.
	Port	The port where your Sonnen API is running.
WeConnect	Username	Your username you use for login in the WeConnect ID App
	Password	Your password you use for login in the WeConnect ID App

Optional configuration

Section	Entry	Description
SolarManager	SolarCheckInterval	Interval for checking the state of the car and solar power.
	MinBatteryLoadToStartCharging	Minimum battery load that charging will be started. Before this SolarManager won't start charging your car.
	MinPowerToGridToStartCharging	Minium power to grid that charging will be started. Below this SolarManager will only start charging if battery load is 100%.
	MaxPowerFromGridToStopCharging	If your home uses more power SolarManager will stop charging your car. Value is negative because it's a power consumption.
	MinBatteryLoad	Minium battery load you want to have. If battery load goes below this, SolarManager will stop charging your car.
	SimulationMode	You can enable simulation mode to only log everything without really start or stop charging your car.
	VehicleNameSuffix	The suffix you need to add to your car's nickname (see below).
WebApp	Port	Port for the web app.
	WebPushSubject	VAPID setting for push notifications.
	WebPushPublicKey	VAPID setting for push notifications.
	WebPushPrivateKey	VAPID setting for push notifications.

Enable/Disable SolarManager

As SolarManager can't know if you want to load your car with solar power only or just load it because you need a full battery, there's a switch you can use right from your WeConnect ID App. If you want SolarManager to be active for your car, please extend your car's nickname in the app with the suffix (SMC) (= SolarManager Control). If you want to disable SolarManager for your car, just remove the suffix again.

The reason for this nickname suffix is because it's the easiest way you can enable or disable SolarManager from everywhere without having access to your SolarManager instance running at your home.

Plug your car

SolarManager needs a car in the Ready for Charging state. This means you have to plug your car to your wallbox and authorize the charging.

Web App

In the web app you currently see the today's log entries and you can enable push notifications as well. Please note, that push notifications do not work in Edge/Chrome, as there is no valid SSL cert for the web app. Push notifications are tested on Firefox (Windows) and iOS (added to home screen from Safari).

Tested with

• SolarEdge solar system with 12 kWh battery
• Volkswagen ID.4 1st MAX
• Volkswagen ID.Charger Connect