Lucid Air charging with Enphase IQ charger

[DeaneG]

I recently added an Enphase PV/battery system and an Enphase IQ charger. The key point of the ecosystem's charger is that it can throttle the car's charging current to closely match my excess PV generation, avoiding sending my heard-earned power back cheaply to the utility, PG&E. I'd rather dump that excess current into my Air and Volvo EV.

The charger can modulate the current signal it sends to the car in increments of 25% of the charger's max power: 0%, 25%, 50%, 75%, 100%.

The problem I am having is that if the there is no excess current available to charge the Air, something eventually goes to sleep in the Air and the car won't start charging again when current is available. It won't charge until I wake the car with the app.

I'm thinking this is same problem that sometimes prevents other home chargers (that have a charge window scheduled) from charging the Air once the car has gone to sleep.
The same charger works fine on our Volvo EV without issues.

Are there any general solutions to this problem?

So far I've been waiting to plug the Air in until I know there is excess PV current available for charging, then hoping the power will be there without interruption so the Air's charging software doesn't go to sleep.

 

[scal_air]

Although I don't have an answer for you, I'm wondering if your Enphase charger will be able to do bidirectional charging. I saw that you gave up and purchased a battery back up, but if/when Lucid rolls out bidirectional charging it would add to your capacity.

Thinking about it, can you charge to a percentage of your home battery capacity? It would be a more constant source of power for charging your car and your home battery could continue to charge from the varying ppwer of the PV panels.

 

[DeaneG]

Although I don't have an answer for you, I'm wondering if your Enphase charger will be able to do bidirectional charging. I saw that you gave up and purchased a battery back up, but if/when Lucid rolls out bidirectional charging it would add to your capacity.

Thinking about it, can you charge to a percentage of your home battery capacity? It would be a more constant source of power for charging your car and your home battery could continue to charge from the varying ppwer of the PV panels.

My IQ charger won't do bidirectional. But Enphase has shown a bidirectional product they intend to release later this year. I don't know if it will be compatible with the Air. Enphase's solution uses the industry standard method of pulling DC directly from the car's battery rather than Lucid's once-mentioned method of using the Wunderbox to convert battery power to AC.

I would like to use the car's battery for load shifting if possible. My typical summer day would only cycle the Air's battery by about 20%.

These things are still very much a work in progress, especially with the transition to J3400 thrown in.

 

[DeaneG]

FWIW I was able to get the Air to charge on the IQ charger by waking the car via phone app once there was enough excess PV power available that the IQ charger had started trying to deliver.

Good thing I had a cell signal so I could wake the car while out on a hike. And also monitor my PV system so I could tell when to do it. Not a seamless experience as it is with our other EV.

 

[scal_air]

Glad you could make it work but it doesn't sound very autonomous nor satisfying.

 

[borski]

FWIW I was able to get the Air to charge on the IQ charger by waking the car via phone app once there was enough excess PV power available that the IQ charger had started trying to deliver.

Good thing I had a cell signal so I could wake the car while out on a hike. And also monitor my PV system so I could tell when to do it. Not a seamless experience as it is with our other EV.

You could automate this trivially with Home Assistant. Just integrate both enphase and Lucid and set up an automation to wake the car when the enphase charger has current to send.

 

[DeaneG]

You could automate this trivially with Home Assistant. Just integrate both enphase and Lucid and set up an automation to wake the car when the enphase charger has current to send.

I may be the first person to add a Lucid integration to Hubitat instead. But I'd have to break my own vow to learn no more programming languages!

 

[borski]

I may be the first person to add a Lucid integration to Hubitat instead. But I'd have to break my own vow to learn no more programming languages!

Do it