Pulsar Plus 3 Phase: Total minimum current

[andre-richter]

Hi,

I hope it is okay to ask here: I cannot find any information about the total minimum configurable current that you can set with 3 phase Pulsar Plus wallboxes.
Is it 6A per phase or 6A for all three phases together? This would make quite a difference if you plan to only charge with photovoltaic excess.

Maybe somebody has checked that on his Pulsar already? :)

Thanks!

[GrantKeymer]

Hi Andre-Richter,

I have a Wallbox Pulsar Plus and there are no settings in the app or My Wallbox portal relating to 3-phase. The circuit board has all 3 phases present even though I cannot use them because my EV doesn't support 3-phase charging. Our local Wallbox distributor told me that every Pulsar Plus will support 3-phase charging, simply by changing the cable connecting to the EV.

In addition, I found this...

Applicable to 1-phase and 3-phase connections

"This smart Wallbox charging station is suitable for charging your car with a maximum of 3x32A (22 kW), but you can set this in values ​​between 6A and 32A so that this charging station is perfectly applicable to any network connection and can supply different charging capacities. This allows you to charge any electric car!"

To me, it looks as though the max. current setting ranges from 6A per phase to 32A per phase.

Do you have a Pulsar Plus installed yet?

Cheers,
Grant.

[andre-richter]

Hi @GrantKeymer,

thanks for your feedback. I don't have a Pulsar Plus yet. I am currently checking out options.

My prime use case is that I want to heavily use solar excess power, and as little grid power as possible. Meaning that throughout the day, I will have something between 0 and ~5000 W excess available.

Should the 6A setting of the pulsar plus apply to all three phases, I understand this as being able to set a minimum charging power of 6A * 230V * 3 = 4140 W. However, this much excess will be very rarely available from solar, meaning I have to get the remaining part from the grid most of the time.

In a single phase setting, where the minimum charging power would be 6A * 230V = 1380 W, it would be way easier to dynamically control the excess usage, because on sunny days, 1000 W or more is available even in the morning hours.

I have been told some wallboxes just switch off one or two phases if you want to go down to 6A current overall. Unsure if the Pulsar would do that 🤔

Best,
Andre

[GrantKeymer]

Hi @andre-richter,

Thanks for explaining further about your use case. It's very similar to mine, actually.

We have 7560Wp of solar panels installed and during summer (now in New Zealand) excess solar power is plentiful. It's no problem to fully charge our 40kWh Leaf on a fine day. However, if it's partly cloudy, I find myself constantly watching the sky and adjusting the charge current accordingly. My sole reason for joining this forum is to develop some sort of automation process which monitors excess solar power and adjusts the Pulsar Plus charging current accordingly.

I don't understand why the EV manufacturers decided to adopt a minimum charge current of 6 Amps. When our Leaf is approaching 100% charge, and doing cell-balancing, the charge power fluctuates between 0.5kW and 1.2kW in cycles over a period of 30 to 60 minutes. If it's OK to have a charging current of 2 or 3 Amps during cell-balancing, then why not all the time?

It doesn't make any sense to me, but that's what we are stuck with :(

In your case, maybe you should consider only connecting a single phase into the Pulsar Plus. That would allow you to go as low as 1380W charging power, which it seems is the most important factor for you. The trade-off is that you would lose access to the full 22kW charging capability.

Can your EV actually handle 22kW of charging power though?
My Leaf is restricted to 3.3kW and I find that is plenty, given the amount of driving we typically do in a day.

I am certain that the Pulsar Plus doesn't have the ability to switch off one or two phases. I have studied the documents for the Pulsar Plus NA which can use split-phase input as they have in USA. Even there, they don't mention anything about dropping phases. It depends on your house wiring as to what you have available, so I would suggest only connecting one phase. Your EV will still charge, but at 1/3 the rate of 3-phase.

You must have a very powerful solar inverter if it supports 3-phase. Mine is only single phase, but with a 12kWh house battery, it keeps us running right through the night for much of the year. In winter time, we charge our EV from the grid, but try to avoid it from September until April.

Well, I hope some of my comments will be useful to you.

Kind regards,
Grant.

[GrantKeymer]

Sorry, I was getting mixed up in my thinking between 'Eco' mode and 'Full Green' mode. I guess Wallbox have good reasons for their decision regarding minimum power levels, but I can see what you mean...

With a 3-Phase Pulsar, the Full Green minimum power threshold of 4140W is too demanding and unlikely to be met, except in summer time for a few hours per day. The rest of the time, you would be stuck with Eco mode, pulling a fair amount of power from the grid and a smaller proportion of solar power.

To me, Wallbox's approach is too simplistic. As I explained earlier, I want to have the flexibility of diverting house battery charging power to the EV when the sun is at its strongest. Then, later in the afternoon, when the sun is diminishing, I want to stop charging the EV and divert all solar power to the house battery. This is what I do now by using the Wallbox app. Only with HA, will I get the flexibility I need and I expect your use case will be similar.

[lbbrhzn]

@GrantKeymer , which device do you intend use to decide what the charging current should be? In my setup, I use the P1 port of the smart meter that's installed by the electricity company. I noticed that some people have connected a EM340 to their home assistant setup, using a RS485 interface board. See https://community.home-assistant.io/t/how-do-i-get-correct-values-from-carlo-gavazzi-em340-modbus/331909

[GrantKeymer]

@GrantKeymer , which device do you intend use to decide what the charging current should be? In my setup, I use the P1 port of the smart meter that's installed by the electricity company.

@lbbrhzn - That's a good question! First I'm going to try and get some details of the API from my solar power company. If they don't have an API, I'll write a python script to scrape the values from the webpage below...

If neither of those approaches work out, I am thinking of trying a device from IAMMETER called WEM3080-150A. It lets me get away from RS485 and use WiFi directly, also someone has developed an API suitable for HA. However, it's interesting to see the info you mentioned about using an EM340 with HA. Seems like there are plenty of options for Energy Meters with HA. However, if I can use the existing energy meters (3 of them) provided with my solar power system, it makes sense to do so.

[andre-richter]

I might be doing a poor job expressing my issue. Let me try to paraphrase.

The key sentence in the official document is:

Eco-Smart checks the total active power in L1+L2, and starts charging with the following power: in Eco mode at 460W per phase and in Full Green at 1380W per phase.

With my vehicle being 1-phase, there are two possible scenarios:

1. I get the 1-phase Pulsar (with 1-phase energy meter). EM sends available power to Pulsar; Pulsar checks for at least `1380W` (in full green) before starting to charge. Everything good.

2. I get the 3-phase Pulsar (with 3-phase energy meter). EM sends 3-phase aggregate of available power to Pulsar; Since the Pulsar is a 3-phase version, what does it do?
   
   1. It has built-in logic that recognizes there is only a 1-phase vehicle connected, and checks the EM report for at least `1380W`.
   2. It just flat out assumes 3-phase charging, since it is a 3-phase wallbox, and checks for `4140 W` as a threshold condition. Disregarding there is only a 1-phase vehicle connected. Meaning that charging the car in full green would start way too late.

If it is 2.ii, this would be bad for my use case as long as I have the 1-phase car.

In the meantime, I got feedback from Wallbox support. It currently really behaves like described in 2.ii... 😞

However, they said they are working on implementing 3 phas to 1 phase switching. But I cannot say if this will be a pure SW update for existing Wallboxes or needs new HW.

[GrantKeymer]

How about using some relays to drop out 1 or 2 phases? You would need relays rated to handle 32 Amps and they aren't that expensive. Then control them from a script in HA.

Good to hear you got a response from Wallbox in such a short time. In my experience, they have been very slow.

[andre-richter]

If is 2.ii, then you might be able to use Eco mode instead of Full Green.

Good point. Sounds like a possible workaround.