Amber Electricity - Price controlled EV charging

Amber Electricity now provide price controlled EV charging for their customers. This was made possible with the aquisition of Charge HQ. The following configuration screens are now available in the Amber mobile application under the configuration for EV charging. The applications EV charging component is in beta so these pages may change in the future. The screenshots can be clicked to open then zoomed in using your browser to read the finer details. 

Explanation of terms

Charge Level Charging

• Charge level - Sets when charging is triggered for your vehicle.
• Recovery Charge %  - The minimum charge for your car. Start charging if the price is below your recovery charge price.
• Recovery Charge Price - The maximum price in cents per kwh for recovery charging.
• Opportunity Charge Price - The maximum price in cents per kwh for normal charging.

How does this all work?

If your recovery charge percent is %40, recovery charge price is 30c and your car is at %20, Amber will start charging when wholesale prices fall below 30c and stop if it goes above it. This will continue until the car reaches %40 charge. If you always want to keep your vehicle at this minimum charge no matter the price you would set the recovery charge price to 99c - not recommended. This has nothing to do with the maximum charge amount you have set on the vehicle itself. It is entirely independent.

Opportunity charge price is the maximum you want to pay to charge your vehicle at all other times. This allows you to charge your car at very cheap electricity pricing. In the picture above it shows 15 cents per kwh. During a sunny day without too much demand on the network, wholesale prices can drop to 9c per kwh. What a great time to charge the car! Even at 15 cents to bring an 80kw battery from %20 to %80 will only cost you $10 on a 7kw home wall charger. That is amazing value. During these times Amber will keep charging your vehicle until the vehicle stops the charging. In other words it has reached the limit you have set in the vehicle itself.

Schedule Charging

Start and end times - Schedule charging between these times if the price is right.

Max Price - the price limit for any charging during the scheduled time . If the price goes above this it will stop charging.

Solar Charging

Using excess solar to charge your EV for $0.

Max Solar Generation - This is the maximum wattage your solar charging system can generate.

Save this for my house - EV charging will leave this amount of wattage for the house.

Tesla Management

These are the management pages for a Tesla. Your vehicle will be different. For Tesla's the user authorises Amber to use the Tesla API to interface with your vehicle as all charging is controlled from the vehicle itself.

Max Charge Speed

This sets a limit on how much power draw your car will use while charging by setting a charging rate. Not used Iin NSW as all home charging for EV's are required to be on a dedicated power circuit with their own circuit breaker rated for EV charging. 

Disclaimer: I am a customer of Amber Electricity. I do not have any special arrangements and this is not a paid advertisement. Just useful information for EV owners.