That's more a function that the EVSE would manage.

 

Exactly. The car has no way to know if the electrons are coming from the sun or from burning dino gas.

 

Of course. But when on excess solar, the power sent by charger can vary a lot, and stop for possibly long periods.
some cars have power and/or voltage thresholds below which they can’t charge, some cars will stop the charging session if the power does not come for a while, etc.
I am told that some cars can’t cope with it at all.
The id7 seemed to cope with it once, but not now - it could be that the once it worked, it was a v sunny day and power coming was high enough, and down periods not too long.

Or it could be something else (like a bug introduced in either software)

Hence I am asking for contributions from people with experience and/or knowledge about this.

 

You would need an EVSE that has knowledge of how much power the solar is producing. Not many would know this. The the Emporia Vue has the information about how much juice the solar is producing. Couple that with an Emporia EVSE, and in theory you get the ability to do what you want.

Excess Solar Management | Help Center

Excess Solar Management automates control of your connected devices with your solar generated power, including charging your electric car.

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I have an integrated Solaredge system (panels, inverter, EV charger, etc), so my EV charger does know how much excess solar power is available- and it is advertised as such.
As I wrote, it even worked once

 

I have an integrated Solaredge system (panels, inverter, EV charger, etc), so my EV charger does know how much excess solar power is available- and it is advertised as such.
As I wrote, it even worked once

It doesn’t get much better than that. Your EV charger is part of the ID.7 and it doesn’t know anything about where the power comes from or whether it’s excess or even solar. Assuming it’s set for maximum charge, it charges at a rate less than or equal to the maximum rate communicated to it by the SolarEdge Electric Vehicle Supply Equipment (EVSE) which gets the present excess solar from the SolarEdge inverter.

 

I recently purchased the Emporia EVSE with the Vue and have been trying to get he Excess Solar feature to work. I haven't had much success. It seems to work for a minute or two, as advertised, but then the charger throttles to full speed. I've emailed their support, but haven't gotten much help.

The setup is a bit complicated. You have to turn the charger off, make sure adequate excess solar exists* at least three minutes prior to plugging in, then you need to turn on the charger. If someone turns the electric stove or clothes dryer on, then it stops pulling the excess (because there isn't any). But, like I said, even when I've followed those steps (and made sure nothing else turns on in the house), the charger still seems to only charge at the reduced rate for a few minutes.

The better solution is to use the Reduced Charge Current setting in the app or on the car. That way, the ID.4 slow charges, and I've seen that is closer to our average excess solar production.

*I happen to have already had a Sense device installed, so I am able to see live solar production over consumption, so that is helpful to make sure I had enough excess solar.

 

The better solution is to use the Reduced Charge Current setting in the app or on the car. That way, the ID.4 slow charges, and I've seen that is closer to our average excess solar production.

Seems like you should be able to set any charge current you want in their app? This is what I do. Wouldn't that be an easier way to get any amount of reduced rate instead of limited to always 8A?

 

Update: I am hearing back from Solaredge support - I will report back when what they say is clear (it is not at the moment)

 

As an owner of a grid tied system who works away from home when it’s sunny and is incentivized by the power company to charge at night, can someone kindly ELI5 me on why one would want to bother with this?

 

Many places don't have net metering for solar, and instead they only credit you a fraction like 50% of what they charge you for power. Even CA who is a leader in solar recently removed their net metering for new customers but grandfathered in the existing systems. So in all those places you want to maximize self consumption of your solar output if you can. And many places do not offer incentives to charge at night, you are lucky.