EV Charging Station Commissioning and Test. Tesla vs Victron! Kind of...

W there it [Music] is found it [Music] [Music] the bin truck was just there that's like 4 minutes later I have to use this extension cable to uh charge my vehicle and my wife is using the mobile adapter which came with a car to charge hers it just plugs into a PowerPoint over here we have these two beautiful charging stations here which we want to commission today finally charge from the offcut system here with these two stations guys welcome back to the off garage here in beautiful sunny almost spring Australia look at this again it's getting boring right just blue sky just boring we have um negative 23 amp outside at the moment because yeah my wife's car is charging we're at 32% state of charge I'm expecting heaps of power to come in today we will have some light clouds in the sky which is perfect for my offgrade system here in the shade it diffuses the light and we probably will get 120 130 amps today outside so I'm really looking forward to it well this morning I definitely saved these two proes here coming with the Tesla wall connector one is the Quick Start guy and the other one is the important safety information I don't think we need this actually anymore but this one is important because it carries the QR code to log into the actual wall charger I know there's another method you have to take off this um wall charger again and on the inside there is actually the QR code as well as the Wi-Fi password printed in so even if you lose this um quick start guide you still have access to all these information of course but I thought would be a good intro for the video here me doing a dumpster [Music] dive okay first of all we want to turn on the power for this station there we go we've got a couple of green bars and a red bar oh only a red bar at the top now so then let's see what this QR code does for us oh it only giv gives us the details so obviously scanning this QR code only gives you the default password for the for the internal Wi-Fi access point going to our Wi-Fi settings and it already shows up as the Tesla wall connector with this number okay we need to connect to 1921 168 92.1 all right and this should connect us to the wall connector there we go and we can see the uh voltages between the active and neutral and active to Earth neutral to Earth One Vol no alerts Wi-Fi it's always the first thing you want to do is connect your device to Wi-Fi right so and then obviously you get this message lost connection to to device because now the charging station has connected to your home Wi-Fi and is not using the internal um access point anymore so in the next step you want to download the Tesla one app from Google Play it then wants you to log into to your Tesla account and we have to scan the QR code again it says here press and hold the handle button for 5 seconds retrieving device information okay so now we are connected finally Wi-Fi is already connected installation settings select country Austria so here we can set our maximum output current we have a 20 amp breaker installed so so we put in 20 and the ground monitor interruptor yeah we turn this one on as well here this obviously only monitors the ground connection and if it gets too high it will disable the wall connector click on done and of course there is a software update available we have a look at this later access control all vehicles only Tesla authorid Tesla vehicles and compatibility mode okay we select all vehicles recent false zero group power management we have only one W connector but you could go in here and can connect up to five slaves to one master station and if they all share the same power connection they would load balance all the connected Vehicles so pretty cool software update meter not detected I don't think we've got a meter here automatically no we don't have a meter here okay let's do the software update ah the software is up to date it says okay cool right that's pretty much it that was very quick and the system details give us again the voltage from the active to Earth active to neutral and neutral Earth perfect so it looks like it is actually not necessary to connect to the Wi-Fi hotspot first if you download the Tesla 1 app it does it all for you by scanning this QR code so very handy okay so that is very exciting for the very first time we use this wall connector all right just press the button here on on the handle and it opens the charging lid we plug it in and let's see what we got says it's connected we want to increase the state of charge a bit all the way up to 65 it doesn't matter all right and it start charging straight away look at this okay 20 amps hey heyyy hey go down go down go down okay so now with the app here I can select the charging speed of the vehicle all the way from 5 amps to 20 amps see it says it there 5 out of 20 so 20 is obviously the maximum the breaker can do and also the um what we have configured in the wall connector so uh charging on 5 amps gives me 5 km per hour at the moment but usually it is about 7 km so I'm just wondering if the car is doing something else and using more power for auxiliary stuff whatever he does at the moment there it goes 6 km/ hour it goes up it will establish at 7 km/ hour at 5 amps so let's go all the way up to 10 amp yeah it definitely shows a bit less than it usually does 10 amp normally gives me 17 kilm per hour but that works fine and we go to 16 this is the maximum I've ever charged here in the offcut garage and this gives me like 28 km per hour or something so far more than I actually need 23 it shows here at the moment so 16 amps is 3.8 KW from the multi plus so if I go above 4 Kow now the Phoenix inverter will kick in as well to support the multi plus okay we go 17 amps 18 and we are now at 4.2 KW of power usage and now we can see the Phoenix inverter has just kicked in so our AC load has actually declined so and here having a quick look at the victron VM we can see we've got the Phoenix inverter as grid connection pushing 1.8 1.9 kilow into the system we've got still an output of 4.4 KW Phoenix and multiplus combined solar delivers 922 wats and the PV inverter is off at the moment it um resynchronizes now onto the system this is the micro inverter from the Tilt system and here it comes back it has some issues when the Phoenix inverter kicks in as an a crit to synchronize on top of this construct then and sometimes it loses connection and goes to zero watts and then resynchronizes and everything is fine so let's do it then let's go all the way up to 20 amps wow so we are pulling 78 amps from the Batteries Plus the solar to supply 4.2 Kow so this is battery power plus solar combined nice there 30 km/ hour maybe it goes a bit up after a while when all these systems have throttled down in the test just woke up but yeah I will never charge on 20 amps I'm not in a hurry I usually charge only on 10 amps so there you go so when I got the Tesla new a couple of years ago I was actually curious what is the best charging method the most effective charging method to charge the vehicle yeah is it on 5 amps is it on 10 amp is on 20 amps is it on three phase or on DC so I made a video actually on my car Channel about this and um I used this um scan my Tesla app and an OBD adapter to loog into the car's BMS and it shows you a ton of information including the real power going into the battery yeah minus all the electrical systems the electronics and all this kind of stuff so I could compare what is actually going into the battery to what is being supplied by the evse Yeah the electric vehicle Supply equipment don't get fooled this is not a charger the charger is built into the vehicle and I tested all all the currents from 5 amps all the way up to 11 kwatt and 3 phase plus DC charging plus supercharging so if you're interested in these results and I link this video down below it took me a long time to test all these different Chargers because they are in different locations and I had to visit certain public Chargers as well to connect to a three-phase AC as well as DC supercharging all this kind of stuff so pretty cool all right but I think um this concludes the commissioning of the Tesla wall connector everything works fine nice okay I'm Now setting the state of charge again to 50% so don't use the vehicle today and tomorrow maybe so 50% all good bang it has just turned off nice ooh and then it shows a blue light here I like blue lights and interesting is that since I got the Tesla five years ago I only ever charged it with the mobile connector only I have not used anything else here at home it um it comes with different Tails actually to connect to different sockets and charging speeds and everything so this is the normal Australian 10 amp plug it plugs into any PowerPoint you have or extension cables even it is limited to 10 amps and it charges the car with only 8 amps So 20% off and it does a similar nothing with the 15m plug this one has a wider Earth contact and 15m Supply charges the vehicle with 12 amps and then I had this connector here as well this was the 16 amp single phas connector like a Commando plaque or something what it's called and this charged the car actually with 16 amps as well so this is what I have used for the car just in case I needed to charge a bit faster but I basically never used it I only charged with 10 to 12 amps and that was always enough for the last 5 years so I couldn't see it changing actually and I'm using like 16 amps or 20 amps even or something not at home it has all the time of the world to charge but of course the Tesla W connector can be connected to uh three-phase as well and can then charge your vehicle up to 22 Kow of AC that's why it has this massive cable here this is like um 5 * 6 Square mm Plus 5 * .5 for communication and other stuff wow that is a huge cable yeah and then you charge on 5 m right so once you have connected your Tesla wall connector to your Wi-Fi you will also see it pops up in home assistance straightway notifications new device discovered and it shows the Tesla wall connector configure here it is so let's find out what kind of wo that is a lot of entities so we can see the energy charged into the vehicle this was our test this morning session energy status waiting for car because I have lowered the state of charge again to 50% and it has stopped charging now yeah contactor closed not charging shows us the frequency the voltage the handle temperature the MCU temperature PCB temperature the current and also if the station is PL in currently so you can now do all kind of automations of course what you cannot do is changing the charging speed so this needs to come either from your Tesla app or inside the vehicle but yeah this pops fully automatically Plug and Play In Home assistant once you have the Tesla wall connector on your network pretty cool stuff okay but now let's have a look at the victron charging [Music] station there goes the aura okay until he comes back we have finalized commissioning the victron EV charging station and um thanks offrd Power Systems for sponsoring this um charging station so we can all have a look how it works and learn okay so let's turn this one on as well and remove the plastic film oh wait for it to start up okay there's a QR code as well as the SSID we can connect to okay it says um scan QR code to connect that's what we are going to do ah this is just the Wi-Fi key which also comes here on a sticker go into our Wi-Fi settings ah there it is EV CS whatever password it has the IP address here on the screen as well that's very handy 1 19216 8.0.1 one boom username password uh so I didn't know this I had to Google it so obviously it's admin as the username and then the same password as for the Wi-Fi okay it wants me to change the password and then it asking and then it's asking charging current setup set the maximum charging current for your device and here we have a 16 amp breaker so we put this one here on 16 amp save successful redirect to main page after 5 Seconds first setup so how do I connect to my home Wi-Fi here previous previous Wi-Fi access point mode ah down here okay whoops all right go to settings scan okay here we are surveyance drone four that sounds good to me okay successful connecting to saym i p 53 redirect page and 5 six seconds perfect and now it shows us the same screen as here on the display yeah there it is cool so up here we can set a charging current from 6 to 16 amp so if I put in six I can use the slider 10 amps 12 amps all the way up to 16 amps okay now the um app on the phone as well as the charging station are showing 15 amps so they have synchronized now it is a bit delayed if I set this one to 11 see the charging station still says 15 ah now it has 11 and you can do the same here on the slider on the screen so that was actually very easy to set up right let's have a look in settings what else we can change or see why has it got the access point on there again has it reset now again I um think what happens here is that my Wii signal from this access point is too weak that's why the station returns to the original access point sometimes when I cannot connect to the Wi-Fi so I'm trying to change it to another access point which is is a lot stronger but because the connection is so slow so weak takes forever okay I'll be right back yeah look at this I cannot even ping the charging station I've got reply times from over 1 second then there's two times nothing and then 64 milliseconds so this access point doesn't work actually while I'm here on the computer let's have a look at all the settings and possibilities this this uh charging station has to offer um it's a bit more visible here on the computer screen than on the small Mobile screen so let's go to settings Wi-Fi I obviously have connected to a different access point now and connection is bang rapid fast so we can turn off the internal access point obviously so it doesn't broadcast this internal Wi-Fi anymore and good to see we also have a manual a static IP address setting down here which I will use later on under General we have the inverter AC output so this is the location where the vrm in victron will place this charging station EV charger auto start enabled maximum charge current 16 amps uh if crit is available 20 that's not interesting for me energy price I can put in zero enable communication to my GX device yes please uh GX IP oh oh jeez course we have two we have the Raspberry Pi and the power wall ah see yeah that's the 12 that's it that's it okay modb TCP server IP address Whit list State disabl not sure what that is for display backlight oh you can change the brightness control via display enabled time zone do you have to type this in really plus 10 okay this is something you can set up with this um white ring around the charging station static oh plink breathe color wipe color inverse inverse reverse random color is cool try ah yeah here we go look at this huh random color man there's so much important stuff in life and this is definitely one of it okay you can obviously select and configure this white ring when the cable is disconnected when it's connected waiting to start waiting for sun low state of charge charging manually charging Auto charge limit wow yeah we can change the username and password here and we can also update the firmware here which it obviously doesn't do automatically though there's no overthe a update you have to download it manually from the victron website apparently and you have to log into the professional what is it called professional installer login portal or something I'll link this down below and there you can find the firmware for this charging station then you can back up and import your settings and reset the whole station to factory default let's see if we can find it together this is the victron professional login you can do all kind of training here and watch some videos and webinars and learn a lot okay firmware here EV charging station there it is what do we have 1.22 and here we can find 1.29 oo what do I need which file to use check the Curr of your for screen t on one so obviously that's this one here okay charging station back up and firmware open there it is open update uploading firmware let's see if it works I no that's why these videos are marked as Workshop you know we're working things out as we go successfully updated the system will restart after 22 seconds okay yeah that's actually a bit sad from victron that they don't have over theair updates here all the other equipment has that you log in and it tells you there's a new firmware but this one doesn't H okay if you scroll all the way down we should see version 1.29 and this is the hardware version 3.3 serial number okay perfect ah now we have communication we can actually see the battery whatever battery that is and we also see the PV charger ah it looks like it has connected to the power volt 2.0 schul that wasn't there before right General vrm portal ID portal ID stupid me the 212 is the power wall 2.0 and the 210 is the Raspberry Pi I did it wrong that's why I didn't show up you need to go into your settings of your remote console in victra one go to modbus TCP devices and you either do an automatic scan or I have just um turned on the aura charger it was already there but it was turned off so activated it and then afterwards it shows up here in the list as the charger yeah at the current stage it does not show up as a separate tile here in the remote console but it now also shows up in the victron vrm you can see here the EV charger disconnected but it gives you all the detail tells what mode you're running charging time charging current and the charged energy you can also click on this icon up here if you have a live view on your system and you have control to the aura charger from the victon VM so you can actually enable and disable charging set the charging current and also change the mode Auto scheduled or manual so pretty cool um unfortunately when you go to the chart in station the picture it shows is not what you have set up in your victron system yeah this is our tilt system the PV inverter should be on the output it should be here in this Gap and connected to the load yeah this is all AC outc connected I'm not sure why this is now AC in Connected all of the sudden here makes no sense to me and now here with a new firmware installed you can also set up different parameters to control your charging of your vehicle for example start charging at backup battery of stateof charge 90% so once our battery shelf is at 90% it automatically starts the vehicle charging yeah and it stops again if the battery shelf goes to 20% for example and you can configure them as you need them you also have different other settings here to allow grid charging to your vehicle so you can really find you in this charging station to your solar and Battery system now so obviously these settings only work in automatic mode mode and it reads your incoming solar as well as the state of charge of your battery shelf and then stops and starts charging accordingly and this is a tab which came with a new firmware as well the Schuler pretty cool you can add a scene and you say okay from Midnight to 5:00 p.m. in the morning I want to charge with 16 amps except yeah then I can add a scene and say from 05 in the morning to 1 p.m. I will charge only with 6 amps except so you can actually tell the schedule or how fast you want to charge your vehicle that is pretty cool this will make a lot of people happy especially if you cannot control your charging speed inside your vehicle yeah I think most electric vehicles just take whatever com from the evse and you cannot really control how fast they charge so with this station you can modify this individually and adapt this all to your battery and solar system that is really cool we also have now a control over the backl of this LCD display on the charging station so when it's active it's on 100% when it's idling it's on 10% and after 2 minutes it actually turns off you can also hide the Wi-Fi credentials now and they have now implement mented a better way to set your date and time and I've have also bought this charging cable here for the station because well we need a type 2 cable right it's an untethered charging station so it doesn't come with a cable connected like the Tesla wall connector so I got this one here from a company on AliExpress I bought from before and this is really high quality cables here and plugs so for the Tesla I bought myself a 7 m three face cable capable up to charge to up to 11 KW but this one here will stay in the garage 100% of the time so this is just a single cable um I think up to 16 yeah it's a 16 amp cable there there we go 16 amp cable 250 volt so this one is 5 m long comes with these end caps here to protect the um connectors and this free bag it wasn't even mentioned in the description so if you're looking for a charging cable for your electric vehicle or plug-in hybrid I link this company down below it's from Al Express really good quality I like it they make them in all kind of lengths and power ratings for single and three phase so whatever you like you can just choose and pick so obviously one end goes into the vehicle that's the wrong side of course it has a male and female and only one fits into the car okay let's activate the display sitting on six amps at the moment and obviously this plugs in here and then we click on start we are on manual mode so nothing will happen until we Press Start do I need to what's going on hey nothing happens so at the moment it says um EV disconnected here in the vrm if I plug in this cable it says starting for a second and then it stops again it says disconnected what is going on there there's no message inside the car either um I don't know why it doesn't charge no idea so the the um vehicle is now charging finally I managed to find the problem so um I want to show you here on the app if we go to the app and go to General here yes so the problem was that the station showed connecting disconnecting connecting disconnecting so I couldn't really establish a communication line here with the vehicle for whatever reason and I read in the manual that you have to press this calibration button here which then calibrates the control pilot wire from the charging station to the vehicle and you may remember having seen this when we had the station open and had a look inside to all the components there was one single white cable going um through the outlet of the charging station as well and this is the CP the control pilot wire so when the vehicle is fully charged for example it signals this to the charging station through this wire yeah I clicked on the calibration button here and the vehicle started charging after 2 seconds funny there huh and here as well the victron charging stations shows up in home assistant but not automatically as the teslab um wall connector but you have to reload recalibrate reconfigure reconfigure the victon integration in home assistant and then the EV charger shows up with a lot of entities but here as well there are no settings you can change this is a read only you can only read the data but you cannot change the um charging current for example nothing like this but at least it shows up and you can make use of all the data okay my friends I think that's it for today I'm commissioning these two electric vehicle charging stations the Tesla wall connector and the victon EV charging station so quite a bit of a different experience right Tesla wall connector is very straightforward in its settings in fact there's not much to set up with a Tesla system because all the settings all the features are already integrated in the app in the vehicle so there's no need to have a schuer or anything else integrated in the charging station itself quite the opposite with a victron EV charging station lots of settings lots of configuration necessary to make this work now you have to download the firmware manually you have to calibrate the control pilot don't forget it and of course setting up the LEDs on this white ring on the outside of the box yeah they're very important right you get a very comprehensive tool to manage charging of your electric vehicle you cannot only set the speed on the charging station directly you can also schedule different charging times with different charging speeds the station obviously integrates into the whole victron ecosystem you can control the charging speed via the web interface via The victron Connect app and also via the victron vrm so that is pretty handy it's a bit of a shame it doesn't broadcast the stateof charge of the vehicle through this control pilot cable I would really like to have this number in home assistant as well so we can see how far the car is actually charged yeah but as you can see all the features and control mechanisms are here in the software integrated while with the Tesla it is already in the car and in the app so obviously if you have a Tesla vehicle and want the charging stations you go with a Tesla charging station as well because it seamlessly integrates into your ecosystem if you have anything else the victron charging stations may be the right one for you because you can change the charging speed in a lot of electric vehicles you can't set this it just takes whatever the station or the EVS is supplying both systems are integrating into home assistant which is great so you can add all these data into your dashboards or do your own automations with them all right guys I would say give me a couple of weeks or months even with these two stations here to become familiarized with the features and bugs and I'm sure there will be more videos coming about these two stations especially when there's new firmware coming out with new features oh very quick update here and very easy just one number well it was last night when I made the other video and changed the number so it is now the next day well only 60 people have subscribed since last night so welcome to all these um 60 new subscribers guys as always thank you so much for watching thanks for all your amazing support look at this we are almost 100,000 subscribers crazy thanks to all your support thanks to everyone who is supporting the channel financially here thanks for all your hundreds of nice comments under the videos for sharing and liking as you know this all makes these videos POS I here but um everyone who is donating to the channel here buying me a beer is a bit more beautiful than everyone else of course they are right guys and until the next video you stay charged stay safe and thanks again for watching see you then bye-bye and I link this all down below the charging station and the uh and where to get the firm we from and as always all the links are down below don't send me any emails h