Thanks to Emporia’s excellent tools, I have outlets and usb chargers in my house that only work when I’m generating excess solar. I don’t need my power banks every day so they get plugged into those outlets.
Oh, and my car. My car only charges as fast as my solar generation permits. I love Emporia.
Before I read the community, I thought it’s me irl or something
Interesting, though isn’t most of your power going towards heating air, cooling air, or heating water?
Naw, I have a super efficient heat pump and my water heater has been on for about ten minutes today. When high demand stuff kicks in my system kills off discretionary loads until I’m not exceeding my production. And this is in Canada…
I can’t imagine charging a phone would even be noticeable on the power usage. Seriously, what’s a phone charger, like 5 watts?
If it’s houses connected solar (as opposed so some tiny phone charging panel), then a single panel will generate hundreds of watts. Most people would have several or even dozens of panels. I don’t understand why you’d pay for this system instead of an extra panel. It doesn’t seem worth the effort.
Except the car. As someone with solar and an electric car, man that thing sucks up energy.
I’ve got a 5kW array of panels so yea, piddly stuff like charging USB is nothing - it’s more the principal of the thing.
My EV charger is definitely the biggie. The system will dynamically adjust charging current in 1A steps to make use of available excess generation. It works pretty well - 16kWh spinning my meter backwards would earn me a whole $1.50 - instead it added ~20% charge to the car.
I’d love to have smartedr charging of the car. Currently we just use a plug in portable charger, which actively advises against putting anything between it and the socket (e.g. no smart plugs).
One day we will get a nicer car and then install an appropriate charger that can connect to home assistant 😍
