Many manufacturers sell home battery systems to enable homeowners to store power collected from the grid, or renewable sources, to use at times when electricity demand is higher. However almost all of these home battery systems charge a high cost for every kilowatt hour (kWh) of capacity you buy.
At the same time, EV manufacturers have been putting high capacity battery packs into their cars, with no firm plan for what should happen to those batteries if the car is damaged in a crash, or reaches the end of its life as a vehicle.
Battery Emulator enables EV battery packs to be repurposed for stationary storage. It acts as a translation layer between the EV battery and the home inverter. This makes it extremely cheap and easy to use large EV batteries in a true plug'n'play fashion!
Caution
Working with high voltage is dangerous. Always follow local laws and regulations regarding high voltage work. If you are unsure about the rules in your country, consult a licensed electrician for more information.
- Pick a supported inverter (solar panels optional) 🌞
- Pick a supported battery 🔋
- Order the Battery-Emulator compatible hardware 🤖
- Follow the installation guidelines section for how to install and commission your battery properly 📓
- Connect your Battery Emulator hardware to your EV battery
- Connect your Battery Emulator hardware to your inverter
- Wire up high voltage cable between the inverter and the battery
- Add a low voltage power supply to your Battery Emulator hardware
- Configure any additional requirements to allow Battery Emulator to switch on your EV battery (also referred to as 'closing contactors')
- Enjoy a big cheap grid connected battery!
For examples showing wiring, see each battery type's own Wiki page. For instance the Nissan LEAF page
Start by watching this quickstart guide
- Download the Arduino IDE: https://www.arduino.cc/en/software
- Open the Arduino IDE.
- Click
Filemenu ->Preferences->Additional Development->Additional Board Manager URLs-> Enter the URL in the input box:https://raw.githubusercontent.com/espressif/arduino-esp32/gh-pages/package_esp32_index.jsonand click OK. - Click
Toolsmenu ->Board: "...."->Boards Manager..., install theesp32package byEspressif Systems(notArduino ESP32 Boards), then pressClose.
NOTE: The ESP32 version depends on which release of Battery-Emulator you are running! See the Release Notes for more info on which version to use with the current version (Suggested ESP32 version X.Y.Z)
- The Arduino board should be set to
ESP32 Dev ModuleandPartition SchemetoMinimal SPIFFS (1.9MB APP with OTA/190KB SPIFFS)(underTools->Board->ESP32 Arduino) with the following settings:
- Select which battery type you will use, along with other optional settings. This is done in the
USER_SETTINGS.hfile. - Copy the
USER_SECRETS.TEMPLATE.hfile toUSER_SECRETS.hand update connectivity settings inside this file. - Press
VerifyandUploadto send the sketch to the board. NOTE: In some cases, the LilyGo must be powered through the main power connector instead of USB-C when performing the initial firmware upload. NOTE: On Mac, the following USB driver may need to be installed: https://github.com/WCHSoftGroup/ch34xser_macos
NOTE: If you see garbled messages on the serial console, change the serial console to match the baud rate to the code, currently 115200.
NOTE: If you see the error Sketch too big then check you set the Partition Scheme above correctly.
This video explains all the above mentioned steps: https://youtu.be/_mH2AjnAjDk
In addition to the steps above, ESP32 requires a dependency for a Python module, pyserial install using the cli.
python3 -m pip install pyserial
If you're using Ubuntu , use apt to manage the dependencies of arduino:
pyserial install: sudo apt install python3-serial
Arduino AppImage must be set as executable after downloading to run correctly
example: chmod 775 arduino-ide_2.3.3_Linux_64bit.AppImage
Also you might need to install FUSE to run appimages
sudo apt install libfuse2
This code uses the following excellent libraries:
- adafruit/Adafruit_NeoPixel LGPL-3.0 license
- ayushsharma82/ElegantOTA AGPL-3.0 license
- bblanchon/ArduinoJson MIT-License
- eModbus/eModbus MIT-License
- ESP32Async/AsyncTCP LGPL-3.0 license
- ESP32Async/ESPAsyncWebServer LGPL-3.0 license
- miwagner/ESP32-Arduino-CAN MIT-License
- pierremolinaro/acan2515 MIT-License
- pierremolinaro/acan2517FD MIT-License
- YiannisBourkelis/Uptime-Library GPL-3.0 license
It is also based on the information found in the following excellent repositories/websites:
- https://gitlab.com/pelle8/inverter_resources //new url
- https://github.com/burra/byd_battery
- https://github.com/flodorn/TeslaBMSV2
- https://github.com/SunshadeCorp/can-service
- https://github.com/openvehicles/Open-Vehicle-Monitoring-System-3
- https://github.com/dalathegreat/leaf_can_bus_messages
- https://github.com/rand12345/solax_can_bus
- https://github.com/Tom-evnut/BMWI3BMS/ SMA-CAN
- https://github.com/FozzieUK/FoxESS-Canbus-Protocol FoxESS-CAN
- https://github.com/maciek16c/hyundai-santa-fe-phev-battery
- https://github.com/ljames28/Renault-Zoe-PH2-ZE50-Canbus-LBC-Information
- Renault Zoe CAN Matrix https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/u/0/d/1Qnk-yzzcPiMArO-QDzO4a8ptAS2Sa4HhVu441zBzlpM/edit?pli=1#gid=0
- Pylon hacking https://www.eevblog.com/forum/programming/pylontech-sc0500-protocol-hacking/
Leave a ⭐ If you think this project is useful. Consider hopping onto my Patreon to encourage more open-source projects!
