Getting bidirectional charging up-and-running is split into several steps. You can start here and now towards making money, reducing your footprint and reducing stress on the grid.
Take your time, best to spread it out over a several days, as for some steps you’ll have to wait on other parties.
Preparation
FlexMeasures
FlexMeasures provides the optimised SmartSchedules. You can run your own instance (it’s open source), but you can also make use of an instance run by V2G Liberty. Your subscription fee contributes to this open source project. If you prefer this option, please contact us, we can setup your account quickly, usually within a (working) day.
Get an electricity contract with agile prices
The software optimizes dynamic prices, making a contract with agile (dynamic) hourly or more frequent prices the best option. There’s no rush, though. You can try V2G Liberty first and later switch to a dynamic contract. In the Netherlands, several suppliers offer these contracts, including Eneco, Vattenfall, ANWB, Tibber, Zonneplan, Energy Zero (listed in V2G Liberty settings).
Most European countries have suppliers with dynamic price contracts based on the EPEX market.
In Great Britain, Octopus Energy, and in Australia, Amber Energy, offer contracts with half-hourly prices.
A dynamic contract changes the way your electricity is priced and billed, so it is wise to find information and make sure you really understand what this means for your situation before making this change.
Add a sub-calendar to your online calendar
For the situations where you would like the car to be fully charged, e.g. for a longer trip, V2G Liberty optimizes on a dedicated online calendar.
You probably use an online calendar already, we recommend to add a separate sub-calendar for your car reservations. The result must be that in Home Assistant only the events meant for the car are present.
If you do not have an online calendar, get one that matches your needs. The simplest form would be to use the Home Assistant build-in calendar. It is handy quick-start with but in the end most users choose a calendar that is integrated with their normal calendar so they can can easily edit the calendar items on your smartphone (outside HA / V2G Liberty). Options are, for example:
- A CalDav compatible calendar. E.g. NextCloud or OwnCloud if you’d like an open-source solution
- Apple iCloud calendar
This can be reached through CalDav. See the instructions on tasks.org. - Google calendar
Use the Google Calendar integration in Home Assistant (not to be confused with Google Assistant). - Office 365. Via non-official O365-HomeAssistant integration.
- ICS Calendar (or iCalendar) integration, also non-official. It can be found on HACS.
Get (hardware for) Home Assistant
If you have an old unused computer laying around (who doesn’t?) this is a great opportunity to put it to good use. Home Assistant (HA) does not require a fast processor so it usually works. If you think you can, install Linux instead of MS Windows. The latter uses (too) many resources and sometimes does automatic updates that prevent HA from continues operation. Keep in mind, this hardware will act as a server that runs 24×7, so low energy use is preferable.
Home assistant has an overview of hardware suggestions. You’ll also find detailed instructions there on how to install Home Assistant.
Installation
Before installing or activation of V2G Liberty, please make sure that charging and discharging(!) with the EV and Quasar charger works properly. Test this with the app supplied with the charger.
After you’ve activated and configured Home Assistant you can start with the installation of V2G Liberty. On Github you’ll find a step-by-step installation guide for the V2G Liberty add-on.
Happy 🚘 ← ⚡ → 🏡 charging!