You may also find our Equipment Compatibility Checking Wizard useful.
Charge HQ needs to be able to control charging over the Internet. It can either communicate directly to your electric vehicle, or, it can communicate to a smart wall charger installed in your home. To use Charge HQ, you need either:
For a list of supported hardware see:
For those with a Tesla vehicle, charging is controlled via the vehicle and not the wall charger. If you have a Tesla, it doesn't matter if you charge it with the included UMC (mobile connector), a Tesla HPWC (wall connector) or something else. It is not required or possible to connect Charge HQ to a Tesla charger, because the Tesla chargers are not smart chargers and can't be controlled remotely.
If you have a supported smart charger, it doesn't matter which kind of vehicle you have - Charge HQ will work with any vehicle, because the charging is controlled via the charger. If you have a smart charger and a Tesla, Charge HQ can connect to both. Charging will be controlled via the smart charger, and the vehicle state-of-charge etc will be obtained from the vehicle.
If you have a supported solar inverter, battery or energy monitor, Charge HQ can control the charging in response to available solar. See Solar Tracking Settings for more details and configuration options.
For a list of supported equipment, see the Solar Data Support Register.
If your solar equipment includes an energy meter, Charge HQ can charge the EV from the excess solar, because it knows how much power your house is using and thus how much is left over for EV charging. This allows you to charge your EV from your solar whilst minimising imports from the grid.
Consumption monitoring usually requires an additional energy meter and is an option when installing solar. Some solar installations have a meter, whilst others do not. If your solar monitoring shows your grid import and export then your system has consumption monitoring.
If your system doesn't have consumption monitoring, Charge HQ can control charging based on the solar generation, but it can't see what the rest of the house is using. The Solar Tracking Margin setting allows you to reserve some solar power for the rest of the house.
All battery systems include consumption monitoring.
See our guides on identifying energy meters and solar vs grid vs battery monitoring.
If you have a Tesla Powerwall, it doesn't matter what kind of solar inverter you have, as Charge HQ will obtain all solar monitoring data from the Powerwall, not from the solar inverter.
If your home does not have solar, Charge HQ still provides some features which you may find useful. These include:
