Adding my EV Charger to the Sunsynk card
Previously, I wrote about the excellent Sunsynk Home Assistant dashboard card and how useful it is for visualising solar, battery, and grid usage at a glance. Since then, we’ve had our Octopus Charge EV charger installed, which meant it was time to integrate the charger into the Sunsynk card as well.
That turned out to be slightly more involved than I expected.
The EV charger is wired outside of the solar and battery feed. This is intentional, as it prevents the solar batteries from discharging when the car is charging — something I very much want to avoid. The downside is that it complicates how the energy flows are visualised in Home Assistant.
To keep everything accurate, we now have four CT clamps monitoring different loads around the house:
House feed for the solar inverter
Heat pump load for heating and hot water (Shelly Pro EM-50)
Heat pump immersion load (Shelly Pro EM-50)
EV charger load (Shelly Pro EM-50)
Getting all of these working together in the Sunsynk card took some trial and error, especially with the EV charger sitting outside the main solar path.
Before making these changes, the dashboard looked like this, using the compact view of the Sunsynk card:
Previous Sunsynk Card
It now looks like this
New Sunsynk card with EV charger added
I had some issues getting the YAML correct. Below is the YAML for the new card view
``` type: custom:sunsynk-power-flow-card cardstyle: full wide: false large_font: false show_solar: true show_battery: true show_grid: true center_no_grid: false card_height: 100% card_width: 100% decimal_places: 2 decimal_places_energy: 1 dynamic_line_width: true max_line_width: 4 min_line_width: 1 inverter: model: lux modern: false auto_scale: true battery: energy: 19200 shutdown_soc: 5 show_daily: true invert_power: true colour: "#ffa500" auto_scale: true max_power: 3600 show_remaining_energy: true charge_colour: "#008000" remaining_energy_to_shutdown: true solar: colour: "#008000" show_daily: true mppts: 2 display_mode: 2 pv1_name: Front pv1_max_power: 3360 pv2_name: Back pv2_max_power: 2520 auto_scale: true dynamic_colour: true efficiency: 3 load: essential_name: House auto_scale: true show_aux: false show_daily: true dynamic_colour: true dynamic_icon: true additional_loads: 2 load1_name: Heating load1_icon: mdi:heat-pump load2_name: Water load2_icon: mdi:water-thermometer grid: colour: "#ff0000" dynamic_colour: true show_daily_buy: true show_daily_sell: true show_nonessential: true nonessential_name: EV nonessential_icon: mdi:ev-plug-type2 invert_grid: true no_grid_colour: "#9e9e9e" auto_scale: true export_colour: "#008000" grid_off_colour: "#9e9e9e" label_daily_grid_sell: Export label_daily_grid_buy: Import entities: day_pv_energy_108: sensor.lux_solar_output_daily inverter_voltage_154: sensor.lux_grid_voltage_live load_frequency_192: sensor.lux_grid_frequency_live inverter_current_164: none inverter_power_175: sensor.lux_battery_flow_live inverter_status_59: sensor.lux_status day_battery_charge_70: sensor.lux_battery_charge_daily day_battery_discharge_71: sensor.lux_battery_discharge_daily battery_voltage_183: sensor.lux_battery_voltage_live battery_soc_184: sensor.lux_battery battery_power_190: sensor.lux_battery_flow_live battery_current_191: none grid_power_169: sensor.grid_power day_grid_import_76: sensor.lux_power_from_grid_daily day_grid_export_77: sensor.lux_power_to_grid_daily grid_ct_power_172: sensor.lux_grid_flow_live day_load_energy_84: sensor.lux_home_consumption_daily essential_power: sensor.lux_home_consumption_live aux_power_166: null pv_total: sensor.lux_solar_output_live pv1_power_186: sensor.lux_solar_output_array_2_live pv2_power_187: sensor.lux_solar_output_array_1_live pv1_voltage_109: none pv1_current_110: none pv2_voltage_111: none pv2_current_112: none inverter_ac_temp: sensor.lux_radiator_1_temperature_live inverter_dc_temp: sensor.lux_radiator_2_temperature_live remaining_solar: sensor.solcast_pv_forecast_forecast_remaining_today energy_cost_sell: sensor.agile_current_export_rate energy_cost_buy: sensor.agile_current_import_rate essential_load1: sensor.heat_pump_power essential_load2: sensor.immersion_power nonessential_power: sensor.shelly_pro_em_50_ev_charger_energy_meter_0_power environment_temp: sensor.espaltherma_outdoor_air_temperature ```
The key changes to the Sunsynk card configuration are shown below.
cardstyle: full
This replaces the compact view that I was previously using and allows additional loads to be displayed more clearly.
Heat pump loads
The heat pump is split into two separate loads within the card:
additional_loads: 2
load1_name: Heating
load1_icon: mdi:heat-pump
load2_name: Water
load2_icon: mdi:water-thermometer
This makes it much easier to see, at a glance, whether the heat pump is running for space heating or hot water.
The following entities are used to populate the loads:
essential_load1: sensor.heat_pump_power
essential_load2: sensor.immersion_power
nonessential_power: sensor.shelly_pro_em_50_ev_charger_energy_meter_0_power
As I’m writing this in February, I can’t currently show what this looks like with solar production. The examples below still give a good idea of how the layout works in practice.
Exporting to the grid
Battery being used. We are off grid
