Solar Charging

1) Solar Charging with Your Evnex EV charger

All Evnex's home EV chargers installed with a power sensor can be used as a tool to harness your solar power and charge your EV. The power sensor required is included as standard with Evnex home EV charging packages at no additional cost.

Key Advantages

• Clean charging of your EV
• Greater self-consumption of your solar energy
• Reduced energy costs to charge your EV

2) How Our Solar Charging Works

We use Solar Export Diversion; an automated charging feature built to maximise the benefits of locally generated solar energy, prioritise EV charging from clean energy, and minimise the electricity (and carbon) costs of grid power to charge your vehicle.

A power sensor installed in your property's distribution board connected to an Evnex charger will continuously monitor your home's energy usage. If you have a solar PV system installed at your home this sensor will also detect when unused locally generated energy is being exported to the grid. If you wish to use that unused solar to charge your vehicle, you can set up the Evnex Solar Export Diversion feature to re-direct that energy for this purpose.

📘

How does this work alongside other smart loads?

Evnex chargers act as the 'tail end' of an energy export diversion system. For example, if you have a home battery storage system, you cannot set up your charger to take priority and charge your car before directing power to your battery system - your car will always charge last (unless you use the Charge Now feature to override and charge immediately at full speed).

3) How do I Set Up Solar Charging?

The easiest way to set up Solar Diversion for your charger is through the Evnex mobile app. For assistance with setting up an account for the app, please visit our First Charge at Home Guide.

Navigate to the Solar Diversion Menu

After opening the app, scroll down the home screen until you see a menu button labeled "Solar Diversion". This will include a sub-heading with the status of this setting. Likely this will display as "Inactive" if Solar Diversion has not been set up.

After entering the Solar Diversion settings menu, select the toggle to enable this feature.

📘

I don't see the "Solar Diversion" menu?

90% of Evnex EV chargers installed in homes include a power sensor and are eligible to use this feature. However, due to site limitations where a power sensor cannot be installed, some customers may not have access to use this feature due to the lack of necessary hardware.

If you believe you meet the requirements for the solar diversion feature but can't access this option in-app, please contact our support staff for assistance. [email protected]

Configure Solar Diversion Settings

Next, you will be requested to choose from a selection of recommended configurations based on your solar installation. Small (a solar PV system that produces less than 3kW), Medium (3-5kW) and is the most common selection for NZ, or Large (Greater than 5kW).

By choosing one of these presets, your solar export diversion will be automatically set up with recommendations by Evnex based on the size of your solar PV system. However, there are options under the Advanced panel to customise these settings if you choose to.

We do not recommend changing these settings unless you're confident in understanding your solar diversion goals.

Lastly, choose if you wish to "Topup from the grid at nighttime". A majority of EV drivers choose to activate this feature so they can take advantage of off-peak energy rates to charge their vehicle(s) overnight when solar is not available.

By turning this feature on, you will be prompted to set a charging schedule for when your EV is allowed to draw power from the grid.

🚧

Disabling Nighttime Topup

If you turn this setting off, your EV will only charge from solar and never charge from the grid (unless overridden by the "Charge Now" function in the Controls menu).

Confirm Solar Settings

After configuring these settings you will be prompted to confirm your changes and reboot your charger. Once this reboot is complete, you will be able to monitor your solar diversion via the charging session graphs and make additional adjustments as necessary.

4) Monitoring your Solar Diversion

There are several ways you can monitor your solar diversion after completing the initial setup. This includes a visual graph displayed in several parts of the app including the charging widget on the initial Charging Screen, the Charging Summary and your Session History list.

5) Assistance with your Solar Diversion

If you're still unsure how to set up a solar diversion for your charger or have questions, you can contact our support team for assistance during business hours at (NZ) 0800 395 007 | (AU) 1800 959 377 or email [email protected].