Properties of Charging Modes
The SMA eCharger has three charging modes that can be switched between. By default, the SMA eCharger is in "Charging with surplus PV energy" mode.
The effect of the setting on the charging mode is described below.
Mode | Explanation |
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Fast charging | The vehicle is charged with the maximum available power. There is no optimization here with regard to electricity costs and the use of PV energy. The charging power is limited by the maximum charging power of the vehicle, the house connection and the charging station. |
Charging with surplus PV energy | The vehicle is charged with excess PV energy that would otherwise be fed into the utility grid or cut off. The Sunny Portal is used to set how high the proportion of excess PV energy must be, in order for the charging station to charge the vehicle. The Sunny Home Manager does not schedule the charging station to begin charging until it can fulfill the set optimization target. Depending on the configuration of the priority of the optional load, the charging station is taken into account by the Sunny Home Manager before or after other loads when scheduling. In this charging mode, it is not possible to ensure that the vehicle is charged in all cases. If the surplus PV energy is not sufficient for charging, no charging takes place. |
Charging with specified target | The charging station is operated as a necessary load with as much surplus PV energy as possible. By entering a departure time and an amount of energy to be charged in the SMA Energy App, the Sunny Home Manager intelligently plans the charging process. The Sunny Home Manager enables charging at minimum cost and with maximum utilization of PV power with sufficient charging to reach the destination at the entered departure time. After sufficient charging for the target range, the charging station automatically switches to the charging mode Charging with surplus PV energy. |
See also the following video for additional information: | |
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Automatic phase switching
Automatic phase-switching by the product enables maximum utilization of self-generated solar power. This poses no danger to the electric vehicle’s on-board charger because there is a 120-second changeover pause between single- and three-phase charging –
in other words, active single-phase charging process is stopped and three-phase charging process is activated after a short wait. An integrated hysteresis prevents constant switching between the phases.
SMA phase-switching is like a manual interruption in the charging process and causes no vehicle damage when the equipment is properly installed and configured (relay switchover time).
Summer day: Optimal use of strong sunshine through initial single-phase operation, followed by three-phase operation at midday.
Use of self-generated PV energy even with low irradiation/few hours of sunshine thanks to single-phase operation.