EV Charging & Solar

The "energy is now an automation primitive" page. EV charging and solar are now too valuable to leave to vendor apps; EVCC + SolarAssistant + your inverter's MQTT mod is the 2026 stack for "charge the car when the sun is up and electricity is cheap."

For the hub above this layer see Smart Home Hubs; for whole-home power monitoring see Energy Monitoring; for industrial protocols (Modbus is huge in inverters) see Industrial IoT Protocols.

EV charging optimization

• ★ EVCC — Go-based; the open-source "charge the EV with my excess solar" controller. Supports 100+ EVSEs (OpenEVSE, Tesla Wall Connector, go-e Charger, KEBA, Wallbox, Easee, ABB, etc.) and 50+ inverters / power meters. Web UI; HA integration via MQTT.
  • https://github.com/evcc-io/evcc
• ★ OpenEVSE — open-hardware EVSE (Wi-Fi enabled charge controller); free firmware; pairs with EVCC. The DIY EVSE.
  • https://github.com/OpenEVSE/openevse_esp32_firmware
• SmartEVSE — Dutch open-hardware EVSE; load balancing across multiple chargers; popular EU pick.
• go-e Charger — Austrian commercial EVSE; local API and MQTT; well-supported in EVCC.
• Wallbox Pulsar Plus / Quasar — closed EVSE; EVCC supports it via the cloud API; mediocre.
• Tesla Wall Connector — local API on Gen 3+; EVCC supports it.

Solar / inverter monitoring

• ★ SolarAssistant — closed-source but paid one-time license ($25-100); runs on a Pi + USB-RS485; supports most major inverters (Growatt, Victron, Solis, SMA, Deye, MPPSolar / EG4 / LV6548) and publishes MQTT to HA / Grafana. The unambiguous default for "I want my off-grid hybrid inverter on a dashboard."
  • https://solar-assistant.io
• ★ Victron Cerbo GX / Venus OS — Victron's gateway runs a forked Venus OS (open-source); speaks MQTT, Modbus TCP, Node-RED, and HA. The professional / boat / off-grid pick.
• Solar-Log / Solar-Edge / Enphase Envoy — closed cloud; HA integrations exist; varying local-API support.
• Tigo CCA — closed; cloud-only.

Inverter brands worth knowing

• ★ Victron — Dutch; off-grid / RV / boat dominant; open-friendly.
• ★ Growatt — popular budget inverter; Growatt-MQTT community firmware exists for some models; SolarAssistant supports natively.
• Deye / Sol-Ark / EG4 — same OEM platform under different names; widely used in US off-grid.
• Fronius / SolarEdge — premium grid-tie; Modbus TCP local API on most models.
• Enphase IQ — micro-inverters; Envoy local API (limited in newer firmware); HA integration.
• SMA Sunny Boy — German classic; Modbus TCP; well-supported.
• Tesla Powerwall / Powerwall 3 — local Gateway API; HA integration via the tesla_gateway / tesla_powerwall integrations.

Battery / off-grid specifics

• ★ JBD / Daly / Seplos / JK BMS — Chinese BMS for DIY 16S LiFePO4 packs; readable over RS485 / Bluetooth; ESPHome external components for most.
• Pylontech / BYD / LG Chem — branded battery packs with BMS; closed but expose Modbus / CAN.
• Battery Emulator (DIY-EV-batt) — community project for using salvaged EV batteries; niche.

Solar forecasting / charging optimization

• ★ forecast.solar — free hosted solar production forecast; HA integration; feeds EVCC's "charge in 4 hours when production peaks" logic.
• Solcast — commercial; better than forecast.solar; small free tier (10 calls/day).
• HA's Energy Dashboard — once you have inverter + grid + EV all in MQTT, the dashboard does the math.

EV-specific integrations

• ★ TeslaMate — self-hosted Tesla telemetry collector → Postgres + Grafana; gorgeous dashboards. Tesla-specific.
  • https://github.com/teslamate-org/teslamate
• tesla_custom — HA custom component for Tesla vehicles via the unofficial / FleetAPI.
• bouncyrock/teslamate-mqtt — exposes TeslaMate metrics to MQTT for HA / EVCC.
• Polestar / Volvo / Hyundai / Kia / Mercedes EQ — community HA integrations; varying maturity.
• Audi / VW / Porsche — audiconnect / weconnect integrations; rate-limited; sometimes break with VW account changes.

Practical guidance

• ★ Modbus TCP > vendor cloud, every single time. Learn the inverter's Modbus map; HA's modbus integration reads it directly without a cloud account.
• ★ EVCC's "PV mode" is the killer feature — the EV charges only from excess solar, in real time. Set this once and never again schedule manual charging.
• Time-of-use tariff awareness — Octopus / Awattar / Tibber agile tariffs publish 30-min prices; EVCC ingests them and shifts charging.
• Don't hot-add an EVSE to a 200 A panel without a load-balancing controller. Whole-home current monitoring + EVCC's "max grid current" prevents tripping the main breaker.
• Battery dispatch is harder than it looks. "Charge from grid at night, dispatch in evening peak" sounds simple; cycle wear, weather forecast, and tariff stacking complicate it. Start with EVCC's defaults.

Pick this if…

• Default EV solar charger: EVCC.
• Open-hardware EVSE: OpenEVSE.
• Off-grid / hybrid inverter dashboard: SolarAssistant.
• Boat / RV / professional off-grid: Victron Cerbo + Venus OS.
• DIY battery monitoring: JK / JBD BMS + ESPHome.
• Tesla telemetry obsession: TeslaMate.
• Solar forecast for automations: forecast.solar (free) or Solcast (more accurate).