True Green Tesla Solar Charging - Alexa Voice Controlled

Meet our True Green Tesla Solar Charging voice controlled application developed and presented by Tim Kinslow. This app. connects your solar farm or energy monitor to your Tesla vehicle and dynamically adjusts the Tesla's charging amps to match *excess* solar energy. The key here is to charge your Tesla with excess solar energy.

This is what we call 'True Green' charging. It's interesting that electric car manufacturers say they're all about being green, when in fact they rely upon grid energy to charge their vehicles. Much of that grid energy comes from fossil fuels, generally in someone else's backyard.

Tim developed this technology to charge his Tesla only with excess solar power. Again, the key here is “excess” solar power. The objective is to use no grid power whatsoever to charge the car.

Also, because Tim dislikes using phone apps all the time, he built an Alexa skill to kick off the solar charging, get updates, and provide a spreadsheet dump of all the charging activity for any day.

So, how does this all work?

First, you need a Tesla.

Second, you need a solar installation at your home or wherever you're charging. Tim has a 16kw SolarEdge ground installation at his home where he charges his Model Y.

Third, you need some sort of power monitoring. If you have solar, you generally have web access to how much solar you're generating as well as your load consumption. Tim has a SolarEdge ground mount and it gives him all the data he needs via its API. However, you can also get your data from Sense or other power monitoring systems for your home.

This is How it Works:

You start by plugging in your Tesla for charging as normal. It doesn't make any difference what charger you're using because all the charging control happens by your Tesla.

After you start charging, you simply tell Alexa to start solar or green charging. For example, “Alexa, ask Tesla to start Solar Charging”.

The Solar Charging skill then:
- gets the current solar power being generated, as well as
- the total load from your property, and then
- calculates the power difference, to
- identify excess solar power, which is used to
- vary power charging your Tesla.

This entire process is calculated every 30 seconds! There's no need to manually adjust the Tesla app every time you turn on the oven or dishwasher.

Effectively, if there is excess solar power available, the skill dynamically increases the Tesla's charging amp rate by a programmable amount to use as much solar power as possible without drawing any power from the grid.

If the overall load is greater than the available solar power, it will then dynamically decrease the Tesla's charging amp rate by a programmable amount to bring the overall load down below the available solar power.

With being able to dynamically and programmatically adjust the Tesla's charging amps according to available solar power, there's no need to manually adjust the Tesla app.

Turn on the oven - the skill will lower the Tesla charging amps. Turn off the oven - the skill will raise the Tesla charging amps. Again, again, and again.

Once the Tesla finishes charging, the solar charger skill automatically shuts off and will send Tim an email and text message to that effect with the charging stats for the day.

In the video you can see Tim's SolarEdge energy graph for a day with green solar charging.

You can see the Tesla charging for about 4 hours. You can also see the overall load staying just below the total available solar power. Tim always keeps a little buffer so as not to go over when turning on lights and such.

Note how the Tesla draws more current as the sun reaches peak, and then less as the sun falls off. You can’t see it in the graph, but Tim also turned on the oven around 2pm and the program just accounted for the extra draw.

During charging, or after charging, you can get the current solar charging data or stats by telling Alexa to ask Tesla for the charging information.

For example, just say “Alexa, ask Tesla to get my solar charging stats”

The skill will respond with the charging start time, end time, the number of charging samples the skill performed, and the number of times the skill had to change the Tesla's charging amps.

For the geeks out there, you can also ask the skill to email you the charging information in the form of a CSV, or spreadsheet, file.

You can then open the file to see all the data by time. The data includes solar power, load power, current Tesla charging amps, charging amp deltas, time until complete, range, and the new charging amp setting for the Tesla.

Because we enjoy data, Tim likes to graph everything and watch the skill logic do its magic keeping the total load power just under your available solar power.

Honestly, we can't believe Elon hasn't already provided this functionality given he sells both the car and solar.

Anyway, that’s it. Hope you liked it!

Видео True Green Tesla Solar Charging - Alexa Voice Controlled канала Voice2Biz