evcc - smart charging | Blog

Community Meetup: Recap

Mon, 20 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

On April 18, 2026, we met for the first evcc community meetup at the Osnabrücker Ruderverein rowing club. Around 40 participants joined us, coming from Germany, Belgium, and the Netherlands. Some traveled all the way from Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg.

A barcamp-style afternoon

The afternoon ran in barcamp style: participants bring the topics, and the rest takes shape on the spot. Three larger sessions emerged:

Bidirectional charging: Jan Luca and Marcel shared how CUBOS is rolling out bidirectional charging in a corporate context.
Advanced optimization: the interplay with EOS (a project by Akkudoktor), OpenEMS, Victron ESS, Home Assistant, the evcc Optimizer currently in development, and direct marketing of power.
Load management, §14a, §9, and EEBus: current German regulation and how evcc can implement these requirements in practice.

Alongside those, many smaller rounds formed: AI use in the evcc codebase, wallbox recommendations, next steps in the UI (think “mini loadpoints”), and plenty more.

Professional evcc hardware

Dominik presented his eHive system, a DIN rail hardware specifically optimized for use with evcc. To wrap up the session, a device was raffled off among the participants: whoever guessed the weight of the hardware most accurately got to take it home.

Tours through the club’s energy setup

Markus and Michael from the Osnabrücker Ruderverein gave several tours through the club’s energy tech and the boathouses. More on the club’s setup in the community portrait.

Wrap-up

We wrapped up the day with a barbecue and drinks. Good conversations and new connections within the community.

And there was even an evcc cake:

Photo gallery

Detlef documented the meetup. You can find all photos in his photo gallery.

Thanks

A big thank you to the Osnabrücker Ruderverein for hosting us, to Markus and Michael for the tours, and to Detlef for the photos. And to everyone who brought topics, ideas, and energy to make this meetup happen.

See you next time!

evcc-Crowdscience: Real Charging Data for Research

Wed, 25 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The Solar Storage Systems research group at HTW Berlin has launched evcc-Crowdscience — a platform where evcc users can anonymously share their charging data for research purposes.

Why Real Charging Data?

Real-world EV charging profiles are important for research and the energy sector. Existing models often rely on assumptions. But actual charging patterns from households with solar systems and wallboxes can differ significantly from those assumptions. evcc-Crowdscience aims to close exactly this gap.

How Does It Work?

Data is transmitted via MQTT. You generate a token on evcc-crowdscience.de and enter it in your evcc settings. From then on, your charging data is automatically and anonymously sent to the researchers. This works even if you’re already using MQTT for other integrations. No personally identifiable data is collected. If you want to stop participating, just remove the token. You can find all setup details on the project page.

What Is Being Researched?

Based on the collected data, the HTW Berlin team investigates:

When and how long vehicles are charged
How charging power varies in everyday use
How effective solar surplus charging is in practice
How charging behaviour differs between households

The data set and results will be published as open data later on, making them available to everyone.

Photo: HTW Berlin/Alexander Rentsch

Contribute Your Data

We think this project is exciting and worth supporting. The more households participate, the more meaningful the results.

Sign up at evcc-crowdscience.de →

You can find more background information on the HTW Berlin project page.

Strengthening Security with the GitHub Secure Open Source Fund

Wed, 18 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Late summer last year, GitHub approached us about participating in the Secure Open Source Fund. We applied, were selected by the committee, and joined 98 maintainers from 67 open source projects for an intensive security program.

The Programme

The in-depth phase ran across September 2025: roughly 20 sessions, all synchronous over Zoom, with evening time slots that were quite comfortable for European participants, though attendees joined from all time zones. The sessions were led by experts from the GitHub Security Lab and covered a wide range of topics. We had concrete tasks to complete between sessions. Homework, but the effective kind. The real value, though, was hearing these topics explained by people who deal with them daily and discussing them with the group.

Security Is a Workout, Not a Checkbox

One concept that stuck with me was Improving Our Security Posture. Security isn’t a checkbox you tick once. It’s more like fitness. There’s no finish line. You build habits, you keep training, you slowly get stronger. The program gave us a structured training plan.

The topics ranged widely. We worked on licence clarity and compatibility, adding licence checks for our Go and NPM dependencies and publishing SBOMs. We wrote a SECURITY.md and an incident response plan. We learned about the CVE process. Not something I’ve had to deal with so far, but good to be prepared. We covered threat modelling, secure-by-design principles, and UX considerations for building secure software. On the tooling side, there were sessions on static analysis with CodeQL and fuzzing.

GitHub Actions security was one I didn’t expect to be such a deep topic. There are many subtle ways workflows can be exploited, and we ended up doing a lot of hardening on our own actions with tools like actions-permissions.

One session that surprised me was about AI security. GitHub introduced us to the Secure Code Game, a hands-on challenge where you find vulnerabilities in a codebase. The early levels cover classic OWASP problems like SQL injection and XSS. Familiar territory. But the latest season is about tricking software with built-in LLM functionality into doing things it shouldn’t. It was eye-opening to see that this is the new frontier people are actively training for.

Different Projects, Different Perspectives

What made the program special was the mix of projects in the room. There were applications like evcc, Thunderbird for Android, Mattermost, and Mastodon. Libraries like GoReleaser (which we use for our releases), Mermaid (which we use in our docs), and Node.js. And fundamental tools like curl and ImageMagick.

Security means something quite different depending on what you build. An application that runs in people’s homes faces different threats than a library embedded in thousands of projects. Hearing how curl thinks about security compared to how Mastodon does was genuinely valuable. Beyond the content, the network you build with other maintainers is something that lasts.

GitHub Universe

In October 2025, I was invited to the GitHub Universe conference in San Francisco (read more). I was part of a panel about the Secure Open Source Fund at Community Day. It was great to connect with other maintainers in person after weeks of Zoom sessions.

Together with Gregg Cochran (GitHub), Christian Grobmeier (Log4j), Camila Maia (ScanAPI), and Carlos Alexandro Becker (GoReleaser) I recorded a podcast episode on open source security. You can watch it on YouTube or listen to the audio.

Get Involved

If you maintain an open source project: consider applying for the program. The overview you get across security topics is broad, and the network of maintainers you build is just as valuable.

If your company relies on open source (and it almost certainly does): consider sponsoring your critical dependencies directly. Or support the Secure Open Source Fund to help the broader ecosystem. More secure open source means more secure software for everyone.

Community: Driving Instructor Alex

Wed, 28 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Alex is a driving instructor and has been using electric vehicles for driver training for years. With evcc, he controls two wallboxes for his private and company vehicles and is planning to integrate a Wolf heat pump for his 5-unit building. Photographer Detlef paid him a visit.

Michael: Hello Alex, great that you’re taking the time. You’re a driving instructor and use electric cars professionally. What was your first contact with electric mobility?

Alex: Hi Michael, happy to. My first contact with e-mobility was in 2015 on short trips to Hamburg. There I got to know the BMW i3 through DriveNow car sharing. Technically exciting, distinctive with the carbon fibre body and very nippy in city traffic. That fascinated me.

In mid-2021, the first own electric car came along, a VW ID.3 on lease. At that time, I also started using electric vehicles professionally for driver training - ID.3, ID.4, Hyundai Kona. For about two years now, my wife and I have been driving a Hyundai IONIQ 5.

Michael: What was your motivation for switching?

Alex: Several reasons. Environmental protection - fewer emissions, less noise. Then the savings potential: solar power from my own roof into the home battery and then into the car. And then the driving pleasure. The elastic acceleration and quiet driving are pleasant.

Electric Cars in Driving School

Michael: You’ve been a driving instructor in the Cologne/Bonn area for 17 years. What’s it like with e-mobility in your daily work? Has anything changed in recent years?

Alex: Definitely. E-mobility hasn’t fully established itself in the driving school industry yet, but the advantages are increasingly being recognised. I estimate 15-20% of driving school cars are now electric - similar to private vehicles.

There are also colleagues who are sceptical about the new mobility. Some are guided by the usual myths: raw material extraction, battery durability, charging times, range. But the scepticism amongst parents has noticeably decreased in recent years.

Michael: How do the students react?

Alex: Many parents now drive electric themselves and are open to the new type of training. The keyword is B197: 10 driving lessons of 45 minutes each for manual transmission competence, the rest of the training and the exam on automatic. The students like it because the exam is more relaxed. Typical sources of error are eliminated: no stalling, no mis-shifting, no rolling back when starting on hills. Word spreads among the students.

Only very rarely are there parents who insist on pure manual transmission training.

Where’s the Dipstick?

Michael: Are there any funny stories from everyday driving school life with electric cars?

Alex: (laughs) Oh yes. One student was a bit nervous during the exam and went searching for the dipstick in the engine compartment together with the examiner. You don’t forget something like that.

Michael: What about range? Is it enough for a normal driving school day?

Alex: Absolutely. We rely on the large battery variants with 64-77 kWh. Even in winter it works. When we switch to the manual vehicle in between for B197 training, I can recharge for 90 minutes at 11 kW in front of the driving school during that time. I’ve practically never had to use a DC charger.

At home I have a separate wallbox for the company car. So I always start the day with a full battery.

From Tibber Smart Charging to evcc

Michael: How did you come across evcc?

Alex: I looked into HEMS systems in spring 2023. My initial goal was to combine the dynamic electricity tariff with time-optimised charging. Tibber laid the foundation for this with Smart Charging.

After installing the solar system and battery storage, this control was no longer sufficient. The flexibility of evcc impressed me: messaging, tariff integration, diverse support for wallboxes and vehicles. I’m happy to support the continuous development.

Michael: Which functions do you specifically use?

Alex: I use automated charging plans for private and company vehicles to a specific charge level in the early morning. My goal is for the system to be operational without major external intervention. You naturally like to tinker with the final fine-tuning, but in everyday life it should just work.

Two Systems, Two Raspberry Pis

Michael: Let’s talk about your technical setup. You have a somewhat unusual configuration.

Alex: True, I actually run two separate evcc instances. The first system is for my flat. I have a 14.85 kWp solar system on the north side of the roof, combined with a 12.8 kWh BYD storage unit. Two Easee wallboxes are connected - one private, one for the company car. The dynamic electricity tariff runs via Tibber.

The system runs on a Raspberry Pi 4 with Home Assistant and the evcc add-on.

Component	Details
Solar System	14.85 kWp (north orientation)
Inverter	SMA Sunny Tripower SE STP10.0-3SE-40
Storage	BYD HVS 12.8 kWh LFP
Wallboxes	Easee Home (11 kW), Easee ChargeUp (11 kW)
Vehicles	Hyundai IONIQ 5
Dynamic Electricity Tariff	Tibber
Control	Raspberry Pi 4, Home Assistant, evcc add-on

Michael: And the second system?

Alex: The second system is for the entire 5-unit building. There I have a 10 kWp solar system on the south side of the roof and a Wolf CHA 20/24 monoblock air/water heat pump with SG-Ready interface. The electricity tariff runs via Tado/Awattar.

It runs on a Raspberry Pi 5, also with Home Assistant and evcc add-on. The heat pump isn’t fully integrated into evcc yet, that’s my next project.

Component	Details
Solar System	10 kWp (south orientation)
Inverter	SMA Sunny Tripower STP 10000TL-20
Heat Pump	Wolf CHA 20/24 monoblock, SG-Ready
Dynamic Electricity Tariff	Tado/Awattar
Control	Raspberry Pi 5, Home Assistant, evcc add-on

Planner and Battery Boost

Michael: What are your favourite features in evcc?

Alex: Clearly the planner for specific weekdays. I can set different charging times for each vehicle. It runs completely automatically.

And then the battery boost. When the home battery is full and I shoot the solar power from the home battery directly into the car during the day, preferably in summer, during a break - that’s brilliant.

Michael: What would you like from evcc?

Alex: My wish list is getting smaller with the continuous development. Native integration of my heat pump would be nice. Two Wolf systems are supported, but not the CHA yet. The community on GitHub always provides good support with problems that arise.

The integration of household appliances like Miele@home or BSH Home Connect would also be a logical development, even if it’s only about a few kWh here. However, I also agree with the view not to lose focus too much and to concentrate on the core features.

Michael: Thanks for the good suggestions. And thank you very much for giving us insights into your driving school everyday life and your evcc setup. It shows nicely how diverse e-mobility and evcc can be used!

Alex: Happy to! And we’ll see each other in April at the Community Meetup in Osnabrück.

What does your evcc setup look like? If you’re interested in sharing your experiences, your journey and your technology in the form of a community portrait, feel free to sign up here in the form. We’re particularly looking for portraits of extraordinary installations or users outside Germany.

evcc on the SmartHütte Podcast

Mon, 26 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The SmartHütte Podcast is a technical, nerdy podcast about smart home, self-hosting and other tech topics. Hosts Andrej Friesen and Thomas Wiebe regularly discuss their experiences with Home Assistant, Kubernetes, hosting and everything else that interests them.

I was a guest on the latest episode and talked about the evcc project.

What’s it about?

In the over two-hour episode, we discuss the origins of evcc and solar surplus charging. We talk about wallboxes and how smart they really are – and what problems arise when manufacturers want to make them too smart. We talk about the challenges of vehicle integration, cloud dependencies and the EU Data Act. We discuss the sponsoring model, the journey from YAML configuration to graphical interface and how evcc and Home Assistant complement each other – from integration via MQTT to using Home Assistant entities as evcc devices and vice versa. Also: forecasts, optimizer, AI-generated pull requests and the question of when you should really control your coffee machine with solar surplus.

Listen now

To the podcast episode → (in German)

Thanks to Andrej and Thomas for the invitation and the relaxed conversation!

Highlights: Browser Config is Here!

Thu, 01 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

2026 is here and with evcc v0.300, the new year starts with probably the most important milestone: Browser-based configuration is no longer experimental. The most requested feature is finally ready for production use. New users can now set up evcc completely without command line or YAML files.

In this article, we look at the highlights since July 2025 and provide an outlook for the coming year.

Browser-Based Configuration

Initial setup via command line and editing YAML files has long been the biggest hurdle for new users. We’ve been working for several years to simplify this process. With v0.300, the time has come: Browser-based configuration via web UI is now officially released and the recommended way for new users.

What’s New?

Since the last highlights article, we’ve added and improved many features:

Bug Reporting Directly in Web UI: Diagnostic information can now be exported for GitHub issues directly through the interface.
OCPP Setup: The setup process for OCPP wallboxes has been significantly simplified.
Modbus Proxy UI: Comfortable interface for Modbus proxy configuration.
OAuth Authentication: UI-based authorisation flow for BMW, Mini, Viessmann, Home Assistant, Volvo and other services.
Dynamic Suggestions: Smart suggestion values simplify configuration. Used e.g. for sensors and switches in Home Assistant. Coming soon for Modbus settings and network devices.
Many additional bugfixes and improvements.

What’s Still Missing?

All functions can be configured via the UI. However, YAML syntax is still required in some places.

Tariffs and forecasts
Load management and HEMS configuration
Notifications (work in progress)

We’ll be addressing these in the coming months.

For Existing Users

Already using evcc with an evcc.yaml? Then you don’t need to change anything. The evcc.yaml continues to be supported.

If you want to switch to the web UI, you can use both configuration methods in parallel and migrate gradually. Devices from the evcc.yaml are visible in the UI but not editable. More details about the migration process can be found in the FAQ.

evcc Linux Images

Along with the stable web UI, there’s another important new feature: Ready-to-use Linux Images for Raspberry Pi and other systems.

Installation is now possible without much technical knowledge:

Download image
Flash to SD card
Insert into Raspberry Pi
Start setup directly in the browser

Completely without command line or YAML files.

Besides all Raspberry Pi versions, the NanoPi R3S is also supported. The images are based on Armbian, making it easy to add new single board computer platforms.

More details can be found in the installation guide and in the GitHub repository.

More Highlights

Besides the web UI, there have been many other new features in recent months:

Tariffs: 15-Minute Price Forecasts

The EPEX exchange price for electricity has been provided in 15-minute intervals instead of hourly since October 2025. evcc now consistently uses quarter-hour slots internally. Planning algorithm and visualisation have been adapted. Many tariffs and solar forecasts have already been switched to the shorter interval.

Planner: Continuous Charging

The charging planner has received a new option. You can now choose between continuous and cheapest. Continuous planning selects the best contiguous charging window to avoid frequent interruptions.

Integration: Home Assistant

We had contact with the Home Assistant team and are working on better integration of both projects. First results are already visible. You can set up vehicles, chargers and metres based on Home Assistant sensors and switches. We use Home Assistant’s autodiscovery and OAuth mechanism for this. The matching Home Assistant entities are suggested to you in the edit screen.

Loadpoints: Sort & Hide

Loadpoints can now be sorted and hidden in the UI. Settings are saved per browser and enable individual views for different users.

Sponsoring: New Prices

We love open source and are convinced that the open knowledge accumulated in the project is a huge boost for the energy transition.

Software development thrives through you - the community: wishes, ideas, testing and active code contributions drive the direction of the project. However, operation and focus require a lot of time. The project has grown so much that it’s long been more than a small side project for us. Therefore, financial support is important to continue developing and maintaining evcc sustainably in the long term.

After almost 5 years, we’ve now decided to adjust sponsor prices for the first time.

New Prices from 2026

Monthly Sponsoring: from $4 (previously $2)
One-time Sponsoring: from $150 (previously $100)

Why This Adjustment?

A lot has changed in the last 5 years:

Dollar Exchange Rate and Inflation: The dollar exchange rate (GitHub Sponsoring) has fallen and inflation has also increased our real costs.

Feature Scope: evcc has evolved enormously. Features like the web UI, Linux images, smart charge planning, heat pump control, solar forecasts and many other functions have been added. What started in 2020 as a pure solar surplus tool is today a comprehensive energy management platform.

Sustainability: We still have a lot planned (see 2026 outlook below). To continue developing evcc long-term and maintain quality, a solid financial foundation is needed.

Already Sponsoring?

Nothing changes for existing sponsors:

One-time sponsorships (made before 2026) naturally remain in place
Monthly sponsorships continue without price increase – you continue paying the previous price
Voluntary increases are of course welcome, but not required

🙌 Thanks to everyone who has supported evcc over the years – without you, the project wouldn’t be where it is today.

More details can be found in the sponsorship documentation.

New Device Support

44 new manufacturers have been added since July 2025. The evcc device library now includes over 240 manufacturers and more than 620 products.

Wallboxes: Alpitronic, EV Expert, FoxESS, Neoom, Sigenergy, V2C, Veton

Heat Pumps & Heating Elements: LG, NIBE

Metres: Aandewiel, B+GE-TECH, Cozify HAN, DDM, EcoFlow, Home Assistant, Lovato, Senergy, Sermatec, Solakon, Strong Energy, Zendure, amsleser.no

Solar/Battery Systems: ABB, B+GE-TECH, Bernecker Engineering, DDM, DZG, EcoFlow, Home Assistant, Lovato, ORNO, Saia-Burgess Controls (SBC), Schneider Electric, Sermatec, Solakon, Strong Energy, Wago, Weidmüller, amsleser.no, inepro

Vehicles: Ford Connect, Home Assistant, Hyundai (US), Subaru

Of course, many bugfixes and improvements have also been made to existing implementations. Details can be found in the release notes.

2026 Outlook

With the stable web UI, a major milestone has been reached. The work on it has taken a lot of time. We’re happy to now be able to focus more on new features again. The coming year will be exciting – here’s an outlook on the planned priorities:

Optimisation Algorithm

Today, we often control individual components separately. The optimiser aims to optimise the entire system: parallel charging of multiple vehicles, home batteries and consumers – based on price signals, solar forecasts and household consumption predictions.

Since mid-2025, a group of people has been working on an optimisation algorithm for evcc. It’s based on systems of equations and statistics. Product marketing would probably call it AI 😉. The optimiser can already be integrated in read-only mode today and its results can be displayed with special configuration.

The next steps:

Visualisation: Display insights from the optimiser in the evcc interface where it makes sense
Active Control: Control planner, grid charging and other functions based on optimiser data

Better Display for Consumers and Heaters

The display and control of regular consumers (washing machine, dryer, …) and heaters should be improved.

Today, these can already be added as “Heating” or “Additional Meters” and displayed in the energy flow diagram. A display as separate tiles is planned, as well as recording time-based data. The “mini loadpoints” concept has existed for some time – most of the building blocks are now in place. We’re working on this in the coming year and look forward to more clarity and specific functions for these devices.

Details can be found in the GitHub discussion.

Time-Based Statistics

Currently, we only capture statistics based on charging sessions. Additionally, we plan to collect purely time-based data for consumption, generation, heat generation and other metrics. This long-requested feature enables overview statistics like those familiar from many manufacturer apps - but for all devices in your home. Questions like “How much solar power did the heat pump use?” or “How much energy did my solar systems produce today?” should be answerable with this. The display will complement the existing charging-optimised view.

💚 Big thank you to everyone who has brought the project this far – through collaboration, discussion, ideas, testing and especially financial support.

We wish you a good start to 2026 and are happy that the days are getting longer again.

Best regards
The evcc Team
Michael, Andi & Uli

Your Car, Your Data? Support the EU Data Act Petition!

Thu, 18 Dec 2025 00:00:00 GMT

Your car constantly collects data – but you can’t access it. The EU Data Act, in effect since 12 September 2025, should change that. Reality looks different: Most car manufacturers offer no or very limited access.

Why evcc Needs Vehicle Data

evcc optimises charging your electric vehicle with solar surplus. For this, we need real-time data from your vehicle: state of charge, range, charging status. Currently, we often rely on reverse-engineered APIs. This works, but isn’t a sustainable solution.

Official APIs would enable:

Reliable surplus charging with current battery and charging data
Better battery management through precise control
Energy cost optimisation with dynamic tariffs
Grid stability through intelligent load distribution

Why This Affects You Too

“Mine works fine” – we hear that often. The reality behind it: Most vehicle integrations in evcc are based on unofficial, undocumented APIs. Developers spend their free time analysing how manufacturer apps communicate internally and build their integrations on that.

This works – but only until the manufacturer changes something in their systems. Then the integration breaks without warning. This has happened repeatedly in the past and will continue to happen.

The problem doesn’t just affect evcc. All open source solutions like Home Assistant face the same challenge. As long as manufacturers don’t provide official access, it remains a constant cat-and-mouse game with an uncertain outcome.

With official interfaces it would be different: documented, stable, reliable. You could rely on your integration not suddenly stopping to work.

Electric Mobility and Energy Transition

Open data access is important for the energy transition. Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G) requires bidirectional data exchange. Smart home integration only works with real-time data. Optimised charging reduces CO₂ emissions and electricity costs.

The Reality: Limited Access

The EU Data Act is law. Implementation by manufacturers varies greatly.

BMW and Tesla offer API access.

Many others tell a different story: Some manufacturers provide data upon request via email. Others have web forms where you receive 15-minute-old data as a ZIP file. These are not practical solutions for real-time applications like smart charging.

Data APIs already exist: Vehicle data is already available in good quality and via API. However, only for third-party companies who pay for access. Data access is a business model for manufacturers in the B2B sector. Vehicle owners often don’t get this direct access.

In our GitHub discussion we’re collecting the current status per manufacturer.

What Does the EU Say?

The European Commission published clear guidelines in September 2025:

Users have the right to:

Raw and pre-processed vehicle data
Easy, free access to their own data
Data in the same quality as the manufacturer uses
Sharing with third parties of their choice

Manufacturers must:

Make data easily and directly accessible
Without additional costs for personal use
In machine-readable format
Including metadata for interpretation

The legal foundation exists. Practical implementation is still lacking.

The Petition

Maximilian Hauser from the evcc community has started a petition to advance implementation of the Data Act.

What’s demanded:

German Federal Network Agency to enforce the Data Act
Clear technical standards for APIs
REST API with OAuth 2.0
At least 12 requests per hour per vehicle
Public API documentation
99% monthly availability

What You Can Do Now

1. Sign the Petition

👉 Sign here 👈

2. Contact Your Manufacturer

Ask your car manufacturer for API access according to the EU Data Act. Reference the EU guidelines. The more requests come in, the more likely things will move.

3. Spread the Word

Share the petition in your network: forums, Discord servers, Facebook groups, friends and family. Reach out to your favourite YouTube channels covering e-mobility, smart home and renewable energy.

The Data Act is here. Implementation needs pressure from users.

Invitation: Community Meetup

Tue, 16 Dec 2025 00:00:00 GMT

We invite you to the first evcc community meetup! On 18 April 2026, we’ll meet in Osnabrück to get to know each other, exchange ideas, and have a barbecue together. The Osnabrück Rowing Club kindly provides us with their facilities.

What to Expect

The meetup takes place in the afternoon and has space for 100 participants. We’ve planned a relaxed programme:

Getting to know each other: Put faces to GitHub usernames
Exchange: Discussions about your evcc setups and experiences
Networking: Connect with other evcc users and developers
Barbecue: Wrap up the day with food and drinks

Registration

Registration is handled through the rowing club’s booking system. There’s a contribution of €10, which also covers the barbecue food.

Register now →

During registration, you can optionally add your city. This helps us get an idea of where people are travelling from.

Location

View on Google Maps →

Osnabrücker Ruderverein e.V.
Glückaufstraße 16
49090 Osnabrück

The rowing club is located directly at the Stichkanal and offers a great atmosphere for our meetup. As you can read in the community portrait, the club uses evcc for its own energy management.

We’re incredibly excited to finally see some faces behind the GitHub usernames! Whether you’re a user or developer, whether you’ve been around for a while or just started with evcc: come along!

If you have any questions, feel free to reach out in the GitHub Discussions thread.

See you in April in Osnabrück!
The evcc Team
Michael, Andi & Uli

Community: Osnabrück Rowing Club

Sat, 29 Nov 2025 00:00:00 GMT

A large boathouse, showers for dozens of rowers and lots of roof space: the Osnabrücker Ruderverein (ORV) has found a way to reduce energy consumption whilst becoming more independent from fossil fuels using solar power and evcc. Photographer Detlef paid them a visit.

From Solar Thermal to Solar PV

Michael (evcc): Hi Michael, hi Markus, great that you’re taking the time. A large boathouse roof: that’s perfect for solar panels. How did you convince the club to invest?

Michael (ORV): We had a solar thermal system on the roof until a few years ago, but it suffered total economic failure. As part of an energy renovation, a solar system was naturally on the agenda. The initial trigger was rising electricity prices, but also independence from gas. Since we were able to complete many tasks through volunteer work from club members, the investment was significantly lower than initially estimated. That convinced the members.

Michael (evcc): How much of the roof area have you been able to cover?

Markus (ORV): Currently only about a quarter of the roof area is covered with a 30 kWp system. But we can’t install more due to regulations, and we’re already maxing out the grid connection. If that changes, we’d like to expand the system ourselves through volunteer work.

Hot Water for Dozens of Rowers

Michael (evcc): How did evcc come into play? Were there alternative considerations?

Michael (ORV): Our first chairman was already using evcc at home for his solar system, and the experiences were positive. It made sense to use it at the club too.

Michael (evcc): And what does your technical setup look like?

Markus (ORV): We have a Sungrow system with 29.92 kWp, a 12 kW battery, a My-PV AC-Thor 9s with one regulated 6 kW heating element and one unregulated 6 kW heating element on the relay. Each installed in a hot water storage tank. The software runs on a repurposed Dell PC that consumes a frugal 15 W. Proxmox is installed on it, Home Assistant runs in a VM and evcc in a container. We also upgraded our tech infrastructure last year for a stable and future-proof system.

Michael (evcc): How many people shower on a typical day with your solar heating element and has the water ever been too cold?

Michael (ORV): It’s hard to say how many people shower per day. Since we installed water-saving heads and timers, they definitely shower for less time. That benefits our gas savings. The water can’t get too cold because we have a gas heater that warms the water as soon as it drops below 36°C.

5,742 kWh of Gas Saved

Michael (evcc): Can you already say how much gas has been saved through your heating elements?

Markus (ORV): We can analyse the consumption per heating element with Home Assistant. By mid-September, we’d heated water with at least 5,742 kWh of solar electricity. That should correspond roughly to the same amount of gas. Since we’re still in the testing phase, we don’t have long-term experience yet.

Michael (evcc): Would you still have electricity left over for a members’ wallbox or other consumers?

Michael (ORV): We currently feed the surplus into the grid. Since the heating elements went live, there’s not enough surplus left to make battery charging worthwhile. But we’re already planning to install EV chargers in the future.

Component	Details
Solar System	29.92 kWp (approx. 1/4 of available roof area)
Inverter	Sungrow
Battery	12 kWh
Hot Water System	My-PV AC-Thor 9s with 2x heating elements (6 kW regulated + 6 kW unregulated)
Hot Water Tanks	2 units
Control	evcc in container on Proxmox, Home Assistant in VM
Hardware	Dell PC (15 W consumption)

Heat Pump vs. Heating Element

Michael (evcc): A heat pump is significantly more efficient than a heating element. You currently use heating elements for your hot water. Why did you choose this and do you already have plans for a heat pump?

Michael (ORV): We’ve already discussed the heat pump topic. However, our heating needs as a club differ significantly from typical installations. Classic rules of thumb don’t necessarily apply and we want to size the system according to our needs. We also want to be able to assess whether a combined heating/hot water heat pump or separate systems are better for us.

Our gas heating is currently fully functional. We’re currently collecting comprehensive data on consumption, peak demand etc. with Home Assistant. Our goal is to heat completely without gas next summer. We’re very confident about that.

Markus (ORV): Since we have to manage the projects in our spare time, we keep the number of parallel projects low so that we actually get things finished. (laughs) Plus the heating room is full, when a heat pump comes in, the gas boiler has to go out.

From Treasurer Duties to the Water

Michael (evcc): Michael and Markus, you’re the two technical souls of the Osnabrücker Ruderverein: how often do club members see you in a boat, or just in the technical room?

Markus (ORV): Since I handed over the treasurer position in spring, I’ve resolved to get on the water more often.

Michael (ORV): I took over the board position for facilities three years ago and yes, the proportion of work at and for the club has become much higher. Nevertheless, I usually still manage to go rowing once at the weekend.

Wishes for the Future

Michael (evcc): Do you have wishes for the future and further development of evcc?

Markus (ORV): Definitely: a function that ensures water is primarily heated during mornings and daytime, but the battery is 100% charged by nightfall would be our next wish. To preserve the battery and for grid-friendly feed-in, throttling the charging power would also be nice.

Michael (evcc): Thanks for the great suggestions. Since evcc started with EV charging, we still have a lot to improve when it comes to heating use-cases. But there are things to come in the future.

Thanks for the insights into your energy world at the rowing club. It nicely shows how evcc can work in larger community facilities too!

What does your evcc setup look like? If you’re interested in sharing your experience, journey and technology in the form of a community portrait, please sign up here on the form. We’re especially looking for portraits of exceptional installations or users outside Germany.

Update 19 December 2025: We added the section “Heat Pump vs. Heating Element”.

Community: Tobias from Trebur

Sat, 04 Oct 2025 00:00:00 GMT

Tobias transformed his house in Trebur in southern Hesse step by step from a gas heating household into a largely energy-independent smart home. Photographer Detlef visited and took photos.

Energy Independence Instead of Gas Heating

Michael: Hi Tobias, it’s great that you’re taking the time to show us your home and the technical setup. Perhaps you’d like to introduce yourself briefly?

Tobias: Hi Michael, great that we’re doing this. So, my name is Tobias and I’m 41 years old. Like some of my portrait predecessors, I have a background in computer science and am a passionate tinkerer when it comes to energy efficiency and smart home technology. My family and I inherited a detached house a few years ago and have been gradually improving everything since moving in over 10 years ago. We always looked for ways to reduce our utility costs. It was basically a step-by-step transformation from a gas heating household to a largely energy-independent smart home.

Michael: Okay, that sounds like a lot of work, but also like you end up with customised solutions that fit your habits and living needs perfectly. Did you still have time to take care of other things?

Tobias: Of course! One of the bigger challenges was replacing our gas heating with a heat pump. We commissioned a nationwide operating contractor for the complete system. Unfortunately, the installation was chaotic: three planned days turned into a week, they had forgotten the electrical connection, and afterwards various technical problems occurred – from incorrect buffer tank connections to an oversized circulation pump. After several corrections, our own research and the contractor’s insolvency, we had to make the final adjustments ourselves. Today the heat pump runs stably and efficiently with renewable electricity from our own roof – the journey was rocky, but it was worth it.

From Hybrid to Fully Electric

Michael: That sounds like a real test of patience. But good that everything works in the end. How did you get into electric mobility?

Tobias: A few years ago we got a plug-in hybrid, a VW Passat. The solar system followed somewhat later. The aim back then was to achieve about 10 kWp of power without having to give up the solar thermal system.

Setting up the solar system was initially a bit like a puzzle because the supplier delivered two extra modules and we had to figure out how to install them as well. Well, if they’re already there, we wanted to use them too. After the solar system was up, came the first proper EV, a Tesla Model Y, and shortly afterwards the second, an Ora Funky Cat. Initially we had a KEBA P-30 charger. That didn’t work so well and we replaced it with a WARP Charger 2 Pro. With the arrival of the second EV we installed a second charger. To optimally use the solar surplus, the WARP Energy Manager was added to enable 1-phase/3-phase switching. Meanwhile, we upgraded both chargers to WARP Charger 3 with integrated phase switching to simplify the system.

Load Management Instead of Power Upgrade

Michael: You’re already hinting at it, now we’re getting to where and why you use evcc…?

Tobias: That’s right, now we’re getting into the details. Initially I used evcc as a Docker container on a Proxmox cluster. Over time, I got more and more involved with Home Assistant and now only run a Home Assistant Yellow with PoE, CM4 with 8 GB RAM and a 1 TB SSD to save power here as well. I used evcc as an add-on in Home Assistant.

Michael: What does your set-up look like?

Tobias: Our system currently consists of a 10.1 kWp solar system (27x Heckert Solar NeMo), a 16 kWh Sungrow battery, 2 WARP Charger 3 Pro, a Vaillant heat pump (Arotherm plus) and a sauna (9 kW). Balancing the different consumers, storage and producers required some fine-tuning, but that’s somehow fun.

We currently have direct metering for electricity consumption in our house distribution. This means the meter can be permanently loaded with 44 A (30.4 kW). So we had to decide: either carry out a power upgrade with current transformer metering or control the whole thing via dynamic load management. For cost reasons, we initially opted for dynamic load management.

We don’t actively measure the sauna’s power, so we work with two areas in evcc. The area (Main) has a current limit of 44 A and the area (Driveway) has a maximum of 32 A. Both chargers share the 32 A from the area (Driveway), so theoretically one charger could always charge at 22 kW, even though hardly any vehicle currently supports this. We assign the sauna and heat pump to the area (Main). They always have priority over the two chargers. This ensures that the main connection is never loaded with more than 44 A. If the sauna and heat pump are running at full capacity while we’re baking biscuits, evcc would temporarily reduce the charging power of our cars.

Component	Details
Solar System	10.1 kWp (27x Heckert Solar NeMo 3.0 120M)
Inverter	Sungrow SH10.0RT Hybrid
Battery	Sungrow SBR 16 kWh
Chargers	2x WARP Charger 3 Pro
Vehicles	Tesla Model Y, Ora Funky Cat
Heat Pump	Vaillant Arotherm plus vwl 125/6
Sauna	9 kW electric heater
Control	evcc as Home Assistant add-on (Home Assistant Yellow with PoE)

From PV Magazine to evcc

Michael: Great, you have two chargers, a sauna and the usual household consumers covered. How did you come across evcc?

Tobias: Through an article in PV Magazine in 2022. At that point we already knew we would install a solar system and wanted to use the surplus as efficiently as possible. Back then there were only very expensive solutions or solutions that only worked well within the manufacturer’s own ecosystem.

Michael: Yes, that was also a reason why I think the project is so cool: surplus charging. What other features do you use, or is that actually the main use case?

Tobias: Well, until last year we also had Tibber, which meant evcc controlled cheap charging for the cars. With the installation of the heat pump and the upcoming challenges, we switched back to a cheaper, fixed electricity tariff and needed load management. That’s where evcc could shine. So we use it to control the chargers, integrate the vehicles and for load management. I configured the heat pump control, but don’t currently use it because it doesn’t make sense with the solar thermal system.

Wishes for the Future

Michael: What do you wish for from evcc? Which area should we invest more energy in?

Tobias: I’d like to see direct integration of the Vaillant heat pump via EEBUS or EBUS. I think there’s still potential there. Overall I can say that we’ve learnt a lot and achieved a lot. I’m really proud of what we’ve accomplished: the house has an efficient (and more sustainable) heating system, the solar system produces what we need during the day, and together with the buffer tank gives us a high degree of independence.

Michael: Thanks, that’s a good point. And thank you very much for showing us how it works at your place. I’m sure this will inspire one person or another to make changes to their set-up.

What does your evcc set-up look like? If you’re interested in sharing your experiences, your journey and your technology in the form of a community portrait, please register here in the form. We’re particularly looking for portraits of exceptional installations or from users outside Germany.

Highlights: Config UI, Feed-in & AI

Wed, 30 Jul 2025 00:00:00 GMT

Time for a new feature roundup! I’ve selected a handful of interesting topics.

Before we get to the features, an important announcement for all REST API users.

Breaking change: REST API

With release v0.207, there’s a change to the REST API. The endpoints remain unchanged, but the response format will be streamlined. Specifically, the outer result level is being removed.

Here’s an example for the endpoint GET /api/state:

Current JSON response:

{
  "result": {
    "loadpoints": [...],
    ...
  }
}

Future JSON response:

{
  "loadpoints": [...],
  ...
}

The maintainers of popular evcc integrations have been informed and have already made the necessary adjustments.

Users with their own scripts or automations that directly access the REST API must adapt these themselves. More details are available in the corresponding GitHub Issue.

Plans: Late charging

Charge plans have received a new feature: Late Charging. By default, the planning algorithm optimizes charging to occur during the cheapest or cleanest hours. However, it can also make sense to charge the vehicle late, i.e., to match the set target time.

Use cases include:

Preconditioning: Especially in winter, it can be beneficial to warm the vehicle battery by charging at departure time. This saves energy because less active climate control is needed during the drive.
Climate control: If you have climate control activated in the car at departure time, this setting ensures that the required energy is drawn from the EV charger and not from the car battery.
Battery care: When charging to 100% before long trips, the battery shouldn’t sit fully charged for extended periods.

In addition to the checkbox for activating late charging, you can also set the duration that should be charged directly beforehand. This allows you to, for example, continue charging the majority at price-optimized times, but only fully charge the car in the last hour, as shown in the screenshot above.

More details can be found in the documentation.

Configuration via browser

A lot of progress is being made on the topic of initial setup via browser. For a few weeks now, it’s been possible to set up without evcc.yaml, although previously this always started in demo mode.

Now the setup starts with a selection dialog:

Classic configuration with evcc.yaml
Browser-based configuration 🧪 experimental

In the following video, you can see the configuration process with multiple vehicles, meters, solar/battery systems, EV chargers, and heat pumps:

Demo mode

To test the interface without configuration, the demo mode is still available. This can be started with the CLI flag --demo.

In this mode solar, battery and EV chargers use simulated data. Additionally, the authentication system is disabled, and thus all protected functions (configuration, logs, …) are deactivated.

User-defined Devices (Plugins)

Through the configuration interface, vehicles, meters, PV/battery systems, EV chargers, tariffs, smart switches, and heat pumps could already be created. This is based on our large library of device templates for now over 550 products.

Another strength of evcc is the flexible plugin system. This allows even exotic devices and integrations to be connected using HTTP, Modbus, Script, MQTT, etc. These user-defined devices (type: custom) previously had to be configured via evcc.yaml. Now this is also possible via the UI – conveniently with syntax highlighting, validation, and test function.

Charging & heating

The origin of evcc is intelligent charging of electric cars. Meanwhile, the system also supports a growing list of heat pumps and heating rods. The basic optimization goals like efficient use of own energy or cost-optimized charging from the grid are identical in both areas. However, the control behavior, visualization requirements, and setting options differ in detail.

In the configuration interface, the Charging Points section has therefore been renamed to Charging & Heating. The setup flow has also been revised to show the settings relevant to the respective use case.

In the video above (from 2:10) you can see the different workflows for charging and heating. Here’s a screenshot of the first setup dialog:

In upcoming releases, there will be further steps to make heating a first-class citizen in evcc. More details can be found in this GitHub Issue.

Backup & restore

Now that more and more functions are moving to the UI, new questions arise:

How can I back up my configuration?
How do I migrate my installation to a new system?
Can I reset the configuration and start from scratch?

To answer these questions, we’ve implemented a backup & restore function. This allows you to back up the evcc database on your computer, restore a saved state, or delete the configuration while, for example, keeping the charging history.

A big shoutout to @maschga for support in the implementation.

More to come

The number of open todos regarding setup via browser is becoming increasingly smaller. There are still some devices that cannot be created, and the topic of debug information for GitHub issues still needs improvement. And of course, there’s always room for improvement in existing functions.

However, it’s now foreseeable that configuration via web interface will soon become the new standard. Version 1.0.0 is getting closer.

Note: Configuration via evcc.yaml will continue to be possible in the future.

Dynamic feed-in

With dynamic electricity tariffs, you can adapt charging and heating behavior to the current price situation. This feature is now also available for feed-in.

If you have a tariff with dynamic feed-in prices (e.g., direct marketing, dynamic grid fees, Netherlands, Australia, …), the prioritize feed-in function appears in the settings dialog at the charging point.

This allows you to pause charging or heating during times when it’s more lucrative to feed energy into the grid. You can set a fixed price limit for this. Automation via external scripts or systems via API is of course also possible.

In upcoming releases, we will implement more features related to dynamic feed-in. We’re experimenting with pausing feed-in during times with negative prices and reducing production. More about this here.

AI Integration via MCP 🧪

With the Model Context Protocol (MCP for short), it’s possible to give LLMs like Claude, Gemini, and ChatGPT structured access to external systems, such as evcc.

When experimental is activated MCP, an experimental MCP server will be enabled in evcc. You can include the new endpoint (e.g., http://evcc.local:7070/mcp) in your LLM’s configuration.

The topic of MCP and the available tools are still very young and constantly changing. However, we see great potential and exciting new possibilities here – especially in the area of optimization and automation with local models.

The following video shows an example of evcc working with Claude Code (Sonnet 4):

Request: “The user wants to drive to Hamburg tomorrow at 8 AM with his Tesla.”

The LLM …

… identifies the correct charging point: “white Model 3”
… calculates the distance: Bremen (Title) -> Hamburg (Request)
… calculates the required charge level: 90%
… creates a charging plan: 90% at 8 AM for the Tesla Model 3
… switches the charging mode from “Off” to “Solar” since plans are only active in (Min+)Solar mode

Finally, it queries the charging plan calculated by evcc and returns it to the user.

This relatively simple example shows quite well where the journey could go in the future. We’re excited to see how the topic of MCP develops. Feel free to try it out yourself and share your experiences in the GitHub Discussions.

More details on using MCP with e.g., Claude Code can be found in the documentation.

Production, battery and charging points expandable

If you have multiple solar/battery systems or charging points configured, you can now expand them in the energy flow view to see more details. Devices created via the configuration interface can be given a name for this purpose.

New device support

Since February, we’ve added several new device manufacturers:

EV chargers: Ampure, Autoaid, Charge Amps, Elecq, eledio, EN+, enercab, EntraTek, Free2Move, Free2move eSolutions, Huawei, Kathrein, Plugchoice, Volt Time, ZJ Beny
Smart switches: Home Assistant
Heat pumps & electric heaters: alpha innotec, Bosch, Buderus, Bösch, CTA All-In-One, Daikin, Elco, IDM, Junkers, Kermi, Lambda, my-PV, Nibe, Novelan, Roth, Stiebel Eltron, Tecalor, Vaillant, Viessmann, Wolf, Zewotherm
Meters: Axitec, Bosch, IAMMETER, IOmeter, ORNO, Saia-Burgess Controls (SBC), Sigenergy, Wago
PV/Battery Systems: Axitec, batterX, Bosch, IAMMETER, Marstek, Sigenergy
Vehicles: Toyota

Of course, bug fixes and improvements to existing implementations were also made.

Much More …

This is just an excerpt. The full list of new features can be found as usual in the GitHub Release Notes. Big thanks to everyone actively participating in the development of evcc. You rock 🤘.

Best regards
The evcc Team
Michael, Andi & Uli

Community: Michael from Core Team

Mon, 30 Jun 2025 00:00:00 GMT

We’ve gotten to know many users from the community over the past few months. Today’s portrait is a bit different: Photographer Detlef takes on the interviewer role and talks with Michael from the evcc Core Team.

“The best software is useless if nobody knows about it”

Detlef: Today we’re switching roles and it’s your turn to answer questions. I got to know you and the project through one of your talks. Are you something like the “Head of evcc”?

Michael: No, I wouldn’t describe myself like that. I’m part of the three-person core team together with Andi and Uli. Together we work on this project and share the various tasks that come with an open-source project of this size.

Besides my focus on UI development, I also take care of our visibility in public. That includes things like the website, blog articles, stickers, documentation, some social media, and the occasional appearance at conferences or in YouTube videos. I do this because I think that the best software is useless if nobody knows about it.

From Naive Idea to Core Team Member

Detlef: What was your first contact with evcc?

Michael: My first contact with evcc was probably like that of most users. We had ordered an electric car in 2020 and I was looking for a solution to charge it with excess solar energy. Quite naively, I thought I’d just buy a smart EV charger and that would be it. The reality was sobering: manufacturer-bound isolated solutions, cloud services, proprietary solutions - none of it was what I wanted.

Then I came across evcc. The software was minimalistic, modular, and had an exciting tech stack with Go and Vue.js. The project was only a few months old at the time. I made my first contributions and quickly became part of the core team. Almost five years later, the software has come incredibly far.

Eat Your Own Dog Food

Detlef: I assume you have your own evcc installation running. What does it look like?

Michael: Our journey began in 2017 with a 9.8 kWp south-facing solar system. Back then it was important to stay under the 10 kWp limit here in Germany. In 2023 we also filled the remaining north roof and carport with solar panels. In total, it’s now 18 kWp plus a 12.8 kWh home storage system. These additions have increased our self-sufficiency level.

Of course, we use evcc to charge our electric car with solar energy. But I also try to use all the other features we’ve built into the software so far. From March to October, an evcc-controlled 3 kW electric heating element takes over hot water heating. It only uses solar surplus or very cheap grid electricity. Even our e-bike is connected to an outlet that only delivers power when the sun is shining.

This isn’t really economically driven. Our pellet heating would heat the water a bit cheaper, the e-bike consumption is negligible compared to the car. But my point is to use the new functions myself in everyday life. True to the software development motto: Eat your own dog food.

Component	Details
PV System	18.1 kWp total 7.7 kWp south SolarEdge 9.0 kWp north Sungrow 1.4 kWp carport Hoymiles & AhoyDTU
Storage	12.8 kWh Sungrow
Vehicles	Tesla Model 3
Wallboxes	Easee Home, Go-e Gemini
Heating Element	3 kW TA Aton via PWM
E-Bike	Shelly 1PM
Electricity Tariff	Octopus Energy

Community Power Instead of Expert Knowledge

Detlef: evcc now supports hundreds of devices and services. Do you know them all?

Michael: The feature scope, yes, but the details of individual integrations definitely not. Uli and Andi are the experts for device compatibility. New device integrations almost always come from community members who own the respective device. Sometimes these users are also developers who can provide pull requests. In most cases, we work together with users to come up with a solution.

The beautiful thing about our system architecture is that for feature development, device-specific characteristics don’t matter. Our unified data model ensures that working with e.g. home batteries always works the same, independent of brand and model. If a device offers additional functions like phase switching or controllability, additional options automatically appear in the user interface.

Open-Source vs. Commercial Solutions

Detlef: Let’s talk about Open-Source. Does this still excite you after all these years?

Michael: Absolutely. Open-Source is unbeatable: We create a kind of database that uniformly processes interfaces to almost all EV chargers, inverters, and other devices. This idea of free knowledge is fascinating and an incredibly valuable resource - also for other projects.

Detlef: Many manufacturers offer proprietary systems, some inverters are opening up. What does this mean for your project?

Michael: You’re right. Many manufacturers now integrate intelligent charging functions. In an ideal world, intelligent energy management should be as simple as possible. Tesla does this relatively well with their Powerwall, charger and vehicle combination. But as soon as you leave the ecosystem - different vehicle, integrate heat pump - it gets complicated. This is where solutions like evcc are needed.

Detlef: Do you believe that evcc will find users beyond IT enthusiasts?

Michael: I think so. Today you still need some technical background or at least some love for tinkering. But we’re working on making the initial setup as comfortable as a home router setup. This makes the software accessible to less technically-savvy users as well.

Of course, cloud services are even easier to use: sign up, enter credentials, done. But then you depend on the cloud provider and have to trust in privacy and stability. A local solution in your own four walls gives you full control. Independence, stability, and data sovereignty are important criteria.

No Magic, No Checkbox Flood

Detlef: With the feature requests on GitHub, you can’t satisfy everyone. Who decides what goes into the next version?

Michael: Various factors play a role. Our guideline is not to overload the UI with settings that need explanation, but also not to implement “magical behaviour” that could surprise users. These goals sometimes contradict each other. When in doubt, we reject feature requests - but thanks to open interfaces, many features can also be implemented externally first with custom scripts or Home Assistant.

Demand naturally also plays a role. We supported heat generators only as plugins for a long time to focus on our core functions, charging electric cars. Since the beginning of the year, however, we’ve integrated heat pumps from over 20 manufacturers - simply because so many users wanted it and most of the necessary mechanisms already existed in evcc.

No Roadmap, No World Domination

Detlef: evcc was always a project for vendor-independent charging solutions for me - today it’s virtually a universal EMS. How do you see the future?

Michael: Interesting question. There’s no official roadmap. The community financing model gives us freedom: no external constraints, no milestones or world domination goals with fixed deadlines.

Our only motivation is to optimally adapt the software to user wishes. The community keeps the project alive and sets the direction. Whether we call ourselves “Universal EMS” and can check all product comparison checkboxes - that’s not important for us. What’s important is that we deliver solutions for users’ real needs.

Regarding the future: A frequently requested feature is visualizations and statistics that go beyond charging sessions. So a kind of “dashboard” like you know from inverter manufacturer apps. We already have a lot of ideas for this.

Another big topic is improvements to intelligent control. We’re planning to incorporate production and consumption forecasts into our algorithms. Good integration for external optimization systems and AI-based services are also important. We’re always looking for committed contributors here too. If you’re interested, feel free to contact us on Slack.

Detlef: From me and on behalf of all evcc users: Thank you very much for driving the project forward like this. It delights me over and over again to charge my car with self-generated energy.

Michael: Thanks for the questions and the opportunity to experience the interview format from the other side.

Community portraits wanted! Have you already contributed code to evcc? Then feel free to get in touch here. We’re currently looking for portraits of active community members.

Community: Ulrike & Gunther from Alzenau

Sat, 26 Apr 2025 00:00:00 GMT

The days are getting warmer. A good time for a new community portrait. This time, photographer Detlef visited Ulrike and Gunther in the beautiful town of Alzenau in Bavaria, Germany.

Maximal insulation or maximal PV?

Michael: Hi you two, great that you are willing to participate in a community portrait. Let’s dive right into the topic: How did your journey into electric mobility begin?

Ulrike: Our entry point into electric mobility was in 2018 with a Nissan Leaf, followed by a Model 3. We were still living in a rented apartment at that time. It was already quite adventurous, because we didn’t have our own parking space and there was a limited number of charging points. We had experimented with solar power on our camping trips. There, of course, on a smaller scale, to charge phones, for example.

When we moved into our new house, both topics came together: electric mobility and photovoltaics. This makes our life much easier today. It’s a great feeling to start the day with a fully charged car.

Gunther: Exactly, I especially enjoy the quiet and the comfortable driving experience. As Ulrike already said, it was clear to us from the beginning: we need cheap electricity for the car. At the beginning, we still wondered whether we should focus on maximum insulation or better on maximum solar power. In the end, it was cheaper to install more PV modules on the east-west roof, than to insulate the house extensively. Now we have a new building with a lot of solar power, which allows us to heat our home and our cars even during bad weather.

It’s a great feeling to be independent of the grid for nine months a year thanks to our own solar power. Our energy costs for two EVs, a heat pump and our house are minimal and even drop negativ thanks to the extra solar panels on the garage.

All Electric Household!

Michael: Wow, that sounds like a very consistent implementation. What is your exact tech setup?

Gunther: On the house roof we have 10.5 kWp after west-north-west and 8.4 kWp after east-south-east. The north garage has about 5.1 kWp flat on the east-west roof, so we end up with 24 kWp in total. Since we drive two EVs to work, we have a large battery with 33 kWh of usable capacity (E3DC home power station). So the cars can be charged with up to 12 kW from the battery in the evening after work, which gives flexibility during bad weather.

Ulrike: We have consistently implemented “all electric” in the consumers in and around the house, so we don’t have additional consumers with other, fossil energy forms. This means a high electricity demand, but we can cover it well with the maximum utilization of all roof areas. It also helps to not be afraid of putting solar panels on the north side. Our large battery rounds off the system.

Gunther: Thanks to the many modules and the battery, the system is very economical and we can easily cover bad weather periods. From the beginning of November to the middle of February we draw grid power, otherwise we are self-sufficient. In 2024 our self-sufficiency was 75 %. This year we aim for 80 %!

In addition to the PV systems and the usual household consumers, we have an E3DC-charger that is controlled by the home power station, and an Easee Home charger at the second parking space. This was later added for the second EV and is a simple, uncontrolled charger. Here evcc comes into play: It gives the Easee charger the necessary intelligence to optimally charge the second EV with surplus power and optimized for the dynamic Tibber tariff.

Component	Details
solar system	24 kWp (10,5 kWp WNW, 8,4 kWp ESE, 5,1 kWp O/W on garage)
battery	33 kWh (E3DC home power station)
vehicles	Tesla Model 3, VW ID.5
chargers	E3DC charger (garage), Easee Home (parting space, via evcc)
heat pump	Daikin
dynamic tariff	Tibber

More conscious in winter, more relaxed in summer

Michael: How did this setup affect your daily routines?

Ulrike: In winter and the transition period we are more conscious of energy consumption and plan ahead: when should we do the laundry, when should we charge the car? Expecially for the second wallbox evcc removes the mental load. We plug in and the system takes care of the rest. Very relaxing!

In summer we have so much surplus energy that we don’t need to plan much. Our electrictiy consumtion even increased compared to before.

Michael: Gunther, you are involved in the Energie-Stammtisch Freigericht That sounds interesting. How did it start?

Gunther: We are a group of mostly tech-savvy people who are involved in renewable energy projects in the region. We support the planning of solar systems, batteries, heat pumps and charging solutions at home and share our experiences. We organize balcony solar workshops and are active for the local wind energy expansion. The work is very motivating and benefits the people in the region. I myself came to the association through the topic of EVs and am now part of the executive committee there. Our Facebook page gives deeper insights into our work.

evcc: Nice, Real-Time and Practical

Michael: That sounds like good tips and experiences. A really good tool to advance the energy transition in your own region and to involve your neighbors. Let’s talk about the software again. Do you have a favorite feature in evcc? Do you have any suggestions for improvement?

Ulrike: The second-by-second resolution of evcc is great. We have an old phone stuck to the wall in our living room that displays the energy balance in real time. So we can see the energy balance in real time at second resolution. And the user interface is really nice. The surplus charging also works great with evcc.

Gunther: I see improvement potential in the setup, which I did with the help of my neighbor at the time. The new web-based setup, on which you are working, is exactly the right direction. Regarding stability, i.e. when external interfaces do not work, evcc could react better.

Ulrike: I especially appreciate that I don’t have to worry about anything: just plug in the car, and evcc takes care of the rest. This is a real relief in everyday life.

Gunther: Otherwise, evcc meets our needs in automation and visualization. We are happy to have such a well-designed energy management tool.

Michael: That’s great, thank you for the feedback. Thank you for the insights into your energy world. It’s simply inspiring!

How does your evcc setup look like? If you are interested in sharing your experiences, your path and your technology in the form of a community portrait, then please sign up here in the form. We are especially looking for advanced installations or from users outside of Germany.

evcc App in F-Droid

Fri, 25 Apr 2025 00:00:00 GMT

The evcc App is now also available on F-Droid. F-Droid is an alternative Android app store that only provides free software without proprietary dependencies.

In addition to the Google Play Store, Android users could alternatively download the evcc App as APK from GitHub. Now it is also available on F-Droid. You can use it independently of Google account and Google infrastructure and update it conveniently.

The evcc App is Open Source and contains no tracking. With the distribution via F-Droid, the potential tracking of the traditional app store operators also disappears.

To ensure that the App you install contains only what you see in the GitHub repository, F-Droid offers the possibility to build reproducibly. This required some adjustments to our Expo-based build process. Thank you Maschga and linsui for the help!

Here is the link to the store: evcc App in F-Droid

The new version 1.0.3 contains smaller bug fixes and improvements for iOS users. All details can be found in the Release Notes.

Best regards
The evcc Team
Michael, Andi & Uli

evcc App for iOS & Android

Sat, 01 Mar 2025 00:00:00 GMT

We did it! The first version of the evcc app for iOS and Android is ready. It can now be downloaded from the Apple App Store and Google Play Store.

What does the app do?

The evcc app is a native wrapper for the evcc user interface, providing you with an optimized user experience on your smartphone or tablet. It comes with several practical features that make using your evcc installation much more comfortable:

Easy Onboarding

Automatic Detection: The app automatically finds evcc instances in your local network via mDNS.
Manual Setup: You can also add your evcc instance manually via URL.
Demo Mode: Curious? Just try out the app with our demo instance.

Optimized User Interface

Full-Screen View: Use the evcc UI in full-screen mode without distracting browser elements.
Adapted Design: The user interface respects the peculiarities of your device (notch, rounded corners, etc.).
Improved Gesture Control: Swipe and navigate intuitively through the app without browser zoom or overscroll effects getting in the way.

Reliable Connection

Online/Offline Detection: The app shows a loading screen when your evcc instance is not reachable.
Automatic Reconnection: As soon as your instance is available again, the app automatically reconnects.
No Misoperations: Avoids misleading situations where the user interface is displayed but not functional, e.g., due to network issues.

Flexibility

Change Server: You can change the configured URL at any time - either in offline mode or via the “Change server” menu item.
Light and Dark Design: The native user interface automatically adapts to your device’s system settings.

The app is another step towards making evcc even easier and more intuitive to use. You can now keep an even better eye on your charging station, PV system, and energy flow in your home - directly from your smartphone.

P.S.: Do you have a Mac with Apple Silicon? Then you can use the iOS app directly there as well.

The Technology Behind It

We relied on proven technologies when developing the app. At its core, the app is a native wrapper around our existing web view. We chose React Native in combination with Expo, which allows us to develop the app for iOS and Android with a shared codebase. This significantly reduces development effort and ensures that new features are quickly available on both platforms.

The native components are written in TypeScript and kept to a minimum. For the design system, we use UI Kitten / Eva, which helps us create a consistent and appealing user interface.

Like all our projects, the app is also open source. The source code is available on GitHub. Bug reports, suggestions for improvements, and pull requests are welcome!

Where are we headed?

The first version of the app is an important milestone, but we still have some exciting ideas for the future:

Simplifying Remote Access

Currently, the app only works on the same network as your evcc installation. For remote access, you need to establish a secure connection yourself. This is already possible today with VPN solutions like Wireguard (in combination with a FritzBox) or Tailscale (with on-demand connections and Magic DNS), but it requires additional configuration. We don’t have concrete plans for direct integration into the app yet, but it’s definitely a topic we want to address in the medium term.

Platform-Specific Features

The native app forms the foundation for additional platform-specific features that wouldn’t be possible with a pure web application. These include push notifications to inform you about important events, and widgets for the home screen that give you a quick overview of the current status of your charging station and PV system.

💚 A big thank you to everyone who supports this project financially or through active participation.

🌟 One last thing: Please leave a rating in the App Store or Play Store if you like the app!

Best regards
The evcc Team
Michael, Andi & Uli

Highlights: Forecasts, Config UI

Wed, 19 Feb 2025 00:00:00 GMT

With the release of v0.200, we’ve taken a major step towards stability and user-friendliness. In this blog post, we’ll provide some background on the version jump. For dramatic effect, we’ll save that for the end of the article ;)

We’ll also introduce some new features that have been added since the blog post in November.

Forecasts

We’ve had CO₂-optimized and price-optimized charging for a while. Now, with Forecast.solar and Solcast, we’ve integrated our first two PV production forecast providers. For this, there’s a new solar field in the tariff configuration.

When a PV forecast source is configured, you’ll see the expected PV production for today in kWh in the energy overview. Clicking on this number or the new Forecast menu item takes you to a new view that visualizes the expected PV production for the next 48 hours. This visualization also shows price and CO₂ forecasts.

~~Currently, only one PV forecast (corresponding to one roof surface) can be configured. With the next release, we’ll add the ability to combine forecasts.~~
This is now possible, see PV forecast.

PV forecast data doesn’t yet influence charging planning but forms the foundation for future features and optimizations.

Repeating Charging Plans

When evcc knows the vehicle’s state of charge, several useful charging features become available. The ability to establish a minimum charge level immediately after plugging in has been around for a while. Charging the vehicle efficiently and cleanly using a charging plan (departure time and target charge level) is also a long-standing feature.

Almost as old is the desire for repeating charging plans. That is, the ability to create weekday-dependent plans that don’t require constant attention. A big thank you goes to @Maschga, who tackled this major feature. The result turned out really nice.

Plans can be deactivated when needed (e.g., during vacation). Time zones, daylight saving time, and standard time are handled correctly 🤯. Multiple repeating plans are possible, and for closely scheduled plans, the most relevant plan is selected with the planner’s decision transparently visualized.

Learn more about this under Charging Plans.

Heat Pumps & SG-ready

The demand for heat pump support has come up regularly in recent months. Until now, we deliberately focused on the electric vehicle use case to keep evcc focused and manageable. Integration of heat generators was possible through methods like relays, smart plugs and the plugin interface (example), and was being used.

Since January, we’ve offer an explicit model for heat pump control. Many heat pumps support the SG-Ready model. Using a switchable relay (e.g., Shelly), the heat pump can be instructed to increase operation during surplus or low-cost grid power.

Some heat pumps also support direct communication, e.g., over the network. The list of these devices is still relatively short. If you have such a heat pump and know how to control it, please open a GitHub Issue.

You can find more information about heat pumps & electic heaters in the documentation.

The integration of heat generators in the UI is functional but not yet perfect. Topics like time-based metrics and better representation of the heat pump in the main overview are on our to-do list.

Config UI: Setup via Browser

During evcc’s development, keeping the interface as simple and clean as possible has always been important to us. We regularly receive feedback that other household members (often non-nerds) quickly find their way around the interface. This is a quality that’s not always a given, especially in “classic” open-source projects, and something we’re quite proud of.

An important factor is the strong unification and the underlying data model. Once an inverter, vehicle, or wallbox is configured, the peculiarities of the devices are no longer relevant in the UI.

However, the biggest pain point for many users is actually reaching this “everything is set up” state. Until now, this required using the command line and editing a YAML file.

We’ve been working for a long time to enable initial setup through the UI. Over the past years and months, we’ve gradually added individual functions like creating vehicles, meters, inverters, tariffs, and more. Necessary features like a log view and authentication system are now also on board.

With v0.200, we’ve added the “last big piece” towards setup via UI. Now charging points and wallboxes, the central components of evcc, can be created and modified through the UI. This brings us noticeably closer to a stable 1.0 release.

The configuration interface is still marked as an experimental feature 🧪. Not all fields are in the right place, carry the correct descriptions, and are thoroughly tested. We therefore very much look forward to your feedback, suggestions, and bug reports.

Advanced features, like creating custom devices and better diagnostic tools, are still on the agenda. You can find more about the status and progress around this topic in the Epic Issue.

Try Config UI

If you want to try out the pure UI setup, you can start evcc with an empty evcc.yaml. You’ll get a welcome screen and can proceed with your configuration through the UI from there. Experimental features must be activated in the UI for this.

And Much More…

As usual in the highlights blog posts, this is just a small selection of all the topics being worked on. Since the last post in November, over 250 Pull Requests 🤯 have been developed, reviewed, and successfully merged.

You can find the complete list of topics in the Release Notes on GitHub.

Best regards
The evcc Team
Michael, Andi & Uli

v0.133 - Tesla Developer Account required

Mon, 20 Jan 2025 00:00:00 GMT

Starting with evcc v0.133, a Tesla Developer Account is required. The usage remains free of charge, but requires an additional setup step.

Paid Tesla Fleet API starting February

Last year we integrated the Tesla Fleet API into evcc. Tesla was the first manufacturer to provide an official and above all open API for communication with their vehicles.

Tesla had already announced that this API would not stay free of charge. The prices are now known and will come into effect starting February 1, 2025. The billing is based on usage, with costs varying depending on the type of request.

With tesla.evcc.io we have provided a service that allows evcc users to generate access tokens for API usage. The API communication of these tokens would be billed to us starting February 2025. The costs per user depend on the number of vehicles, charging behavior, and the specific configuration of the update interval. For most users, these costs exceed our “$2 per month” sponsoring model and would not be sustainable for us, even if we would require sponsorship for Tesla integration.

Free API credit for private users

Tesla offers private users a monthly API credit of $10, which should be sufficient for most evcc users.

With the version 0.133, we have adapted the API communication to Tesla so that you can use your own Tesla Developer Account. Old tokens generated with tesla.evcc.io will no longer work. We have considered extending our existing token generation process so that you can use your own Tesla Developer Account. Fortunately, myteslamate.com has already implemented this function. There you can generate Access- and Refresh-Tokens with your Developer Account. So we decided not to reinvend the wheel.

What to do?

For Tesla drivers

For the setup in evcc you need three pieces of information:

Client ID: from the Tesla Developer Portal
Access Token: via the script from myteslamate.com
Refresh Token: via the script from myteslamate.com

Follow the instructions on myteslamate.com to generate this information.

Since you’ll be working on myteslamate.com and developer.tesla.com in parallel, we recommend doing these steps in two browser windows simultaneously. At the end of the process, a script must be downloaded and executed on your computer in the terminal/console.

During the login process, a permissions dialog will appear. For operation with a normal wallbox (not Tesla Wall Connector), evcc requires the following Tesla API permissions:

Profile information (region, list of vehicles)
Vehicle information (charge level, vehicle status, etc.)
Vehicle location (for vehicle detection, not implemented yet)
Vehicle commands (for wakeup)

Once you have successfully completed the process, enter the information in the evcc configuration:

Example:

vehicles:
  - type: template
    template: tesla
    title: Tesla Model 3
    clientId: aaaaaa-11111-... # from developer.tesla.com
    accessToken: ey1234567890... # from myteslamate.com
    refreshToken: EU_1234567890... # from myteslamate.com

You can track your used API credit in the Overview of the Tesla Developer Portal.

For Tesla Wall Connector users

If you use a Tesla Wall Connector, additional steps are required, as the charging commands require signed communication and must be handled through a publicly accessible server. myteslamate.com provides such a proxy. Billing is done on a usage basis directly through myteslamate.com. These commands do not use your Tesla API credit.

We assume you’ve already completed the steps described above. Log into myteslamate.com again and follow the instructions to set up the paid command proxy. Copy the Proxy-Token from the Use MyTeslamate API section. Insert this token into your evcc configuration:

vehicles:
  - type: template
    template: tesla
    title: Tesla Model 3
    clientId: aaaaaa-11111-... # from developer.tesla.com
    accessToken: ey1234567890... # from myteslamate.com
    refreshToken: EU_1234567890... # from myteslamate.com
    proxyToken: aaaaa-bbbbb-... # from myteslamate.com

With this setup, evcc will send charging commands to the myteslamate.com proxy, which will sign it with your Tesla application and forward it to the original Tesla API.

tesla.evcc.io will be discontinued

tesla.evcc.io will be discontinued in February. All tokens generated with it will lose their validity. For further use of the Tesla API, an update to evcc version 0.133 is required.

Other alternatives

The Tesla API communication in evcc is not specific to myteslamate.com. You can generate the tokens with the corresponding infrastructure (public callback URL necessary) yourself and enter them into the evcc configuration mentioned above.

Alternative integrations via services such as TeslaLogger, TeslaMate, TeslaBleHttpProxy, TeslaMate, Tessie or Tronity is also possible.

Tesla Wall Connector owners can also still use TeslaBleHttpProxy as a local “Command Proxy”.

Conclusion

We have discussed several alternatives for the Tesla integration. Special services and price levels for Tesla users were also on the table. We believe that our current solution from a user’s perspective is the best. On the one hand, it does not cause additional costs for most private users. The implementation remains sponsor-free. The API communication does not require third-party services. Users with larger fleets can also use evcc, where the API usage fees directly accrue at Tesla when the monthly free allowance is exceeded.

Best regards
The evcc team
Michael, Andi & Uli

Community: Olaf from Bergisch-Gladbach

Sat, 21 Dec 2024 00:00:00 GMT

In our series of community portraits, photographer Detlef visited Olaf in North Rhine-Westphalia.

We Knew There Was No Turning Back

Michael: Hi Olaf, thanks for taking the time to join this format. Tell us a bit about yourself and how you got into electric cars and PV surplus charging.

Olaf: Hi Michael, my pleasure. I’m 52, married, and have two daughters. I co-founded my first company in 1998 in the e-commerce sector, where I led the SysAdmin team. I’m still active as a co-founder and consultant in various companies.

I got into electric cars about four or five years ago. Before that, I hadn’t seriously considered them and was influenced by the strange media coverage. I thought e-cars would easily catch fire and have limited range. I can’t recall exactly what prompted me to look into it again—perhaps a blog post or a friend’s suggestion about tackling climate change. By early 2020, I was watching YouTube channels about upcoming e-cars in Germany.

It quickly became clear that an Enyaq or a Model Y would suit our needs best. Unfortunately, it took a while for these cars to become available, so I had the wall boxes installed before our first e-car. After a relaxed 5,500 km summer vacation in Spain with the Enyaq, it was clear to my family and me that there was no turning back. We sold the other combustion car immediately. Once you’re into e-mobility, installing a PV system for surplus charging is the next logical step.

Michael: Impressive, so you got into it due to climate change and delved deeper. I’m curious: What’s your home tech setup like?

Olaf: The PV system is 18.92 kWp, with 6 panels on a slightly flatter dormer facing north-northwest. We have two Huawei inverters and a Huawei LUNA2000 home storage with 15 kWh capacity. We use three Alfen Eve Single Pro-line 22 kW wall boxes, and evcc runs on my Synology in Docker. Our three cars regularly charge with solar power. Besides the Enyaq, we have a Model Y and a Fiat 500e.

That’s When It Got Me

Michael: How did you discover evcc and why do you use it?

Olaf: Initially, the solar installer and I tried to get the Alfen wall boxes to charge with surplus using an Elgris Smartmeter. We managed to display the current values but couldn’t adjust the charging power. When Alfen’s support said the feature was still in beta, I looked for other PV surplus charging options and found evcc. I liked its modular approach, allowing devices from different manufacturers to work together. It’s open source and constantly developed, which intrigued me enough to try installing it. After overcoming the yaml file intricacies and seeing evcc adjust the charging power to the PV surplus, I was hooked.

Michael: I can see why. Watching the software regulate is fascinating, especially for optimizing self-produced electricity. What’s your favorite feature?

Olaf: My favorite is the PV mode, which adjusts my wall boxes to the current surplus from the roof. I also appreciate other benefits, like charging the Fiat 500e only up to 80%, which it can’t do on its own. I get more up-to-date PV yield displays than in Huawei’s app, which updates every 5 minutes. I adjust the “residual power” parameter in the UI to set a buffer, ensuring no grid power is drawn when a cloud passes or a large appliance is turned on. The inverter regulates this with the home battery in seconds. Unfortunately, evcc is slowed down by Huawei’s dongle, requiring a 45-second interval. But evcc’s settings offer workarounds for almost every problem.

Michael: It’s great to see evcc compensating for the manufacturer’s weaknesses. Do you use integrations with other systems like Home Assistant or Grafana?

Olaf: Not yet. It’s new territory for me, and I currently lack the time to explore it. I’m quite satisfied with evcc’s built-in functions.

Component	Description
PV System	18.9 kWp, partially north-northwest orientation
Inverter	2x Huawei SUN2000
Home Storage	Huawei LUNA2000 with 15 kWh
Chargers	3x Alfen Eve Single Pro-line 22 kW
Vehicles	Skoda Enyaq, Tesla Model Y, Fiat 500e
Control	evcc on Synology in Docker

Michael: Christmas is almost here. If you could wish for something for evcc’s future development, what would it be?

Olaf: Transitioning the installation from a yaml file to a UI would be a huge step forward. It would simplify many things. Also, intelligent control of heat pumps would be great, as we’re replacing our old heating with a Lambda heat pump. It would be nice to use evcc to heat the large buffer storage with surplus electricity, avoiding expensive grid power at night.

Michael: That’s timely. Our last release added initial heat pump integrations and an SG-ready template. Much more will happen next year. Thank you again, Olaf, for sharing your setup and personal journey into “e-mobility & efficient charging.” I wish you and your family a Merry Christmas and continued enjoyment with your setup.

Highlights: Charts & Stats

Fri, 22 Nov 2024 00:00:00 GMT

The days are getting shorter. A good reason to give a small update on what has been done since the last article in August.

Visualization of charging sessions

The overview of charging sessions has been available for a while. Besides the basic data like energy consumption, charging times, vehicle and odometer readings, we have been collecting information about the share of self-produced solar energy, real prices and CO₂ emissions for some time now.

Previously, this data was only available as a table or CSV export for self-analysis. Now we’ve added nice visualizations of your charging energy, solar energy share, costs and CO₂ emissions.

If you have multiple charging stations or vehicles, you can group and compare the data. In the documentation you can find out how to set up the required CO₂ data sources and dynamic prices.

Battery Boost

The first version of the often requested Battery Boost has made it into the release as an experimental feature 🧪. This function supplements the classic PV surplus charging. When activated, the home battery’s stored energy is also used to charge the vehicle in addition to the available solar energy. The system automatically determines the maximum charging power that the storage system can provide.

The boost can be activated per charging station and will automatically turn off when the vehicle is disconnected.

This can be particularly practical on sunny days. If you want to drive off in the afternoon with your car from home, you can activate the boost before you leave, so that the energy of the fully charged home battery is transferred to the vehicle. Your vehicle leaves with a higher charge level and your home battery has space left to store the energy of the afternoon sun, which you would otherwise have fed into the grid.

Additional settings like setting charging limits and a more prominent placement in the UI (as a Boost button) are on the agenda for a future release.

Flexible Tariffs

The list of different tariffs is growing steadily. Especially in the coming years, the topic of dynamic tariffs will gain in importance.

Digital-first providers like Tibber, Awattar, Octopus or Ostrom offer APIs for the current price and price forecasts for the next day. These prices often already include grid fees and other costs.

For dynamic tariffs, for which the provider does not offer an API, there is the possibility to determine the electricity price based on the day-ahead price at the electricity exchange itself.

A good data source for the spot price is the Energy Charts interface of Fraunhofer ISE. This can be used without prior registration.

Here is an example configuration for the German price zone:

tariffs:
  grid:
    type: template
    template: energy-charts-api
    bzn: DE-LU
    charges: 0.22 # fixed surcharge per kWh (e.g. 20ct grid fee, 2ct provider fees)
    tax: 0.19 # percentage surcharge (e.g. 19% VAT)

The formula (price + charges) * (1 + tax) is used to calculate the final consumer price per kWh. This formula was previously hard-coded.

For more complex tariffs, e.g. with an upper cost limit, you can now also adjust this formula yourself. Here is an example for a dynamic tariff with an upper cost limit of 50ct/kWh:

tariffs:
  grid:
    type: template
    template: energy-charts-api
    bzn: DE-LU
    charges: 0.22 # fester Aufschlag pro kWh (bspw. 20ct Netzentgelt, 2ct Gebühren)
    tax: 0.19 # prozentualer Aufschlag (bspw. 19% MwSt.)
    formula: math.Min(0.5, (price + charges) * (1 + tax))

In addition to the spot price (price) and the values for charges and tax, you also have the power of the math library of Go at your disposal.

Hybrid inverters with limited AC power

Some hybrid inverters offer a higher DC power than the AC power. This means they can, for example, handle 10 kW of PV power, but only provide 8 kW of AC power for the house grid. The remaining 2 kW is stored DC-side in the battery. This has always caused problems in the surplus regulation, since evcc calculates with the full PV power. The global configuration option maxGridSupplyWhileBatteryCharging (yes, a clumsy name) was an attempt to counteract these unintended side effects.

We have replaced this option with a more stable solution. All affected inverter templates (e.g. Fronius, Growatt, SMA, Sungrow, …) now have the extended option maxAcPower. This allows you to define the maximum AC power (e.g. maxAcPower: 8000 for 8 kW) per inverter. The surplus regulation now takes this value into account accordingly.

We are pleased to welcome the Bremen startup cocharge as a new sponsor.

cocharge allows private users to make their charging station public. Your wallbox then appears in the apps of the major charging card providers, optionally with definable opening hours. For the electric car owner, charging and billing at your station works just like at any other public charging station. cocharge takes care of the technical details, claims for THG quotas, roaming agreements and the bureaucracy. Your additional income from external charging sessions is paid out monthly.

The prerequisite for using cocharge is a certified charger (eichrechtskonform) that supports OCPP. The charging point must also be publicly accessible. There are no one-time or recurring costs. cocharge charges only a 15% commission for each charging session.

If you have a company car and a charging card from your employer, this solution can be particularly interesting for you. You not only save yourself the bureaucracy by automatic billing You can also earn extra money if you charge with your own solar power or at a dynamic tariff at favorable times.

Using both cocharge and evcc together? Most certified chargers also have a local interface like Modbus besides OCPP. You can then make your wallbox public and locally optimize the charging power parallel with evcc.

If this sounds interesting to you and you want to be one of the first users, take a look at cocharge.de/evcc.

Many small improvements

As usual, there were also many small improvements, bug fixes and support for new wallboxes, inverters and other devices. You can find more details in the Release Notes.

💚 A big thank you goes to all who support the project through active participation and financial sponsorship.

Happy charging!
The evcc Team
Michael, Andi & Uli

Community: Andreas from Wettringen

Thu, 14 Nov 2024 00:00:00 GMT

In our series of community portraits, photographer Detlef visited Andreas in Wettringen in the Münsterland region.

Fascinated by IT and kept going

Michael: Hello Andreas, nice to meet you. Tell me a little bit about yourself and how you got into electric cars and solar charging.

Andreas: Yes, hello Michael. I’m a pharmacist by profession. I’ve been the manager of the Sonnen-Apotheke in Wettringen for 35 years. I’m married, have two, now grown-up children and we live in a single-family house on the countryside. I’ve sold the pharmacy at the beginning of this year, but the IT in the pharmacy, 10 workstations, 5 virtual servers, Windows and Linux, I’ve always managed myself. This knowledge I could take with me. I’ve been dealing with IT since my discharge from the Bundeswehr. With the severance pay, I purchased my first computer, a Tandy TRS 80. Since then I’ve been fascinated by IT and I’ve stayed with it.

Michael: Wow, you have a lot of technical background knowledge and a good overview of what it takes to run a business with all that. How did you get into electric cars and solar charging?

Andreas: Three years ago, I bought a Mini SE out of interest in the technology. The car replaced a combustion engine Mini Cooper. At the time, wallboxes were still scarce, so I took the one the installer recommended. I had no knowledge what a good solution would be. Two months later, the 10kWp PV system was installed.

One half of the modules is oriented to the east (4.6 kWp), the other half to the west (5.4 kWp). Since I had no storage at that time, I wanted to use the surplus of the PV system directly to charge the Mini.

The Manual was no Longer a Solution

Michael: Okay, you were so early on the topic that there were not many experience values and you made your own. Did it work with the Mini and charging as you imagined?

Andreas: Well, there was no control logic in my installation. Every morning, when the sun was up, I went to the car and plugged it in. This manual process became tedious quickly, so I started looking for automations. Since I’ve been dealing with Open Source for a long time, I looked a bit on GitHub and came across evcc. An installation on a running Linux server was quickly made. The different components like inverter, EV charger and car were quickly integrated.

Wallbox-Debugging, but now it’s running

Michael: That sounds like a good start. How did you proceed?

Andreas: Everything worked, only the wallbox, an Alphatec Mini, was not controllable. After a little research in the forum, it quickly became clear that the EV charger did not work as it should. There was no proper description of the control commands either. But Premultiply can probably say more about that. After my contact with the manufacturer, it went quickly, Premultiply received a test box and the firmware of the control board was updated. I sent the board to the manufacturer and got the new firmware installed. Now evcc can talk to the wallbox. Thanks to this solution, the problem was not only fixed for me, but also for all new Alphatec users. Open Source at its best!

A step-by-step adjustment of the charging power from 6 to 16 A was finally possible. Since the box does not allow switching between single-phase and three-phase, a load switch was added to the sub-distribution. Normally I charge with one phase, since I mostly don’t have more surplus. If I need a faster charge, I manually switch to three phases. The fun with evcc could begin.

Michael: Ah, then you have optimized and adapted your first setup. How did it affect the usage?

Andreas: After a year of operation of the system, I could see that I, despite the electric car, feed about 4,500 kWh into the grid. So, a second electric car would fit perfectly. The old family car, also a diesel, was replaced by an electric one. Now two cars are charged with evcc, one car is always connected to the charging station.

Optimal for our situation. To be able to continue to operate at least one or other device in case of a temporary power outage, I bought an EcoFlow DELTA Pro with additional battery, a total of 7.2 kWh storage. With some scripts in Home Assistant, these are charged when there is a surplus. A part of the storage is then used during the night to reduce the power consumption, the rest as a reserve.

Component	Details
Cars	Mini SE, BMW iX3
EV Charger	Alphatec Mini
Inverter	SMA Tripower 10
Solar System	10 kWp (4.6 kWp East, 5.4 kWp West)
Storage	EcoFlow DELTA Pro (7.2 kWh)
Control	evcc on Ubuntu Server under Proxmox
Integrations	Home Assistant

Home automation and media server

Michael: That sounds like an exciting journey. What does your homelab setup look like? Do you use integrations into other systems?

Andreas: Oh yes, I’ve been fascinated by home automation for a long time. Originally I started with Homematic home automation. And more and more components came along. Since I also tried other manufacturers, I quickly wanted to manage all components together. Home Assistant was my integration.

I’ve also been running a media server for two decades. My children have always managed to damage the music tapes and CDs so much that they were no longer usable. So I started early to digitalize the analog media and make it available centrally.

First with applications that ran on a NAS, later as virtual servers on a hypervisor. Currently, various homelab applications are running under Proxmox: evcc on an Ubuntu Server; Plex as a media server, eBlocker, paperlessNGX, Home Assistant.

Meets all my needs

Michael: After the initial challenges and optimizations, it sounds like you now have a solution that works well. Do you have any wishes or suggestions for the future development of evcc?

Andreas: For me, evcc meets all my needs. I’m happy with the available feature set. It covers all the requirements I have.

Michael: Thank you for the conversation, Andreas. It was great to hear about your setup and your experiences. I wish you all the best for the future.

evcc - smart charging | Blog

Community Meetup: Recap

A barcamp-style afternoon

Professional evcc hardware

Tours through the club’s energy setup

Wrap-up

Photo gallery

Thanks

evcc-Crowdscience: Real Charging Data for Research

Why Real Charging Data?

How Does It Work?

What Is Being Researched?

Contribute Your Data

Strengthening Security with the GitHub Secure Open Source Fund

The Programme

Security Is a Workout, Not a Checkbox

Different Projects, Different Perspectives

GitHub Universe

Get Involved

Community: Driving Instructor Alex

From i3 Car Sharing to IONIQ 5

Electric Cars in Driving School

Where’s the Dipstick?

From Tibber Smart Charging to evcc

Two Systems, Two Raspberry Pis

Planner and Battery Boost

evcc on the SmartHütte Podcast

What’s it about?

Listen now

Highlights: Browser Config is Here!

Browser-Based Configuration

What’s New?

What’s Still Missing?

For Existing Users

evcc Linux Images

More Highlights

Tariffs: 15-Minute Price Forecasts

Planner: Continuous Charging

Integration: Home Assistant

Loadpoints: Sort & Hide

Sponsoring: New Prices

New Prices from 2026

Why This Adjustment?

Already Sponsoring?

New Device Support

2026 Outlook

Optimisation Algorithm

Better Display for Consumers and Heaters

Time-Based Statistics

Your Car, Your Data? Support the EU Data Act Petition!

Why evcc Needs Vehicle Data

Why This Affects You Too

Electric Mobility and Energy Transition

The Reality: Limited Access

What Does the EU Say?

The Petition

What You Can Do Now

1. Sign the Petition

2. Contact Your Manufacturer

3. Spread the Word

Invitation: Community Meetup

What to Expect

Registration

Location

Community: Osnabrück Rowing Club

From Solar Thermal to Solar PV

Hot Water for Dozens of Rowers

5,742 kWh of Gas Saved

Heat Pump vs. Heating Element

From Treasurer Duties to the Water

Wishes for the Future

Community: Tobias from Trebur

Energy Independence Instead of Gas Heating

From Hybrid to Fully Electric

Load Management Instead of Power Upgrade

From PV Magazine to evcc

Wishes for the Future

Highlights: Config UI, Feed-in & AI

Breaking change: REST API

Plans: Late charging