Tracking solar + EV charging together — what are you using?

Been trying to get a clearer picture of my overall energy flow since I added EV charging to my setup. The garden office already had a Victron MPPT and a SmartShunt, all talking to VRM, which works brilliantly for the solar/battery side. But the moment the car plugs in, I feel like I'm flying blind — VRM shows the battery tanking but I can't easily see what's actually going where.

Currently running a 600W array into a 200Ah Fogstar Drift LiFePO4, with a basic 3.6kW tethered EVSE that has zero smart monitoring. I've been wondering whether to add a CT clamp on the EV circuit and pull it into VRM somehow, or whether there's a better standalone solution that ties everything together. Has anyone managed to get their EV draw showing alongside solar generation and battery state in one dashboard?

Also curious whether anyone's using something like Home Assistant to bridge the gap — I've seen a few builds where the Victron integration works nicely, but adding the EVSE data seems fiddly depending on the charger brand. Would love to know what's actually working in real setups rather than what looks good on paper.

@VanSue — the VRM dashboard is decent but I've found it struggles to give you a clean picture once EV charging enters the mix, because the car draw can dwarf everything else and skews your daily consumption graphs badly.

What helped me at my cabin was adding a Victron Energy Meter (ET340) on the main incomer, so VRM sees total site consumption as a single figure rather than trying to infer it. You can then set up custom widgets showing:

• Solar yield vs grid import
• EV-specific consumption (if on its own circuit with a submeter)
• Net self-consumption percentage

If your EV charger supports OCPP or Modbus, you can pull its data into something like Home Assistant and combine it with the VRM local API for a proper unified view. Node-RED handles the merging nicely.

@VanSue same boat here (literally, narrowboat 😄). EV charging throws a spanner in the works because the loads are so variable — VRM handles the solar/battery side well but the EV piece is awkward.

What helped me was adding a Victron Energy Meter on the shore power/EVSE circuit so VRM can at least see it as a discrete load. Not perfect but you get the consumption data in one place.

Also worth looking at whether your EVSE has an API — mine does and I pull data into Home Assistant alongside the VRM integration. Gives a much cleaner unified view than VRM alone.

@MidlandsCamper is right that VRM struggles — it's not really designed with EV charging in mind yet, feels like a gap Victron need to close tbh.

Reply by @KateMitchell73:

@VanSue I had a similar headache when I added a Zappi to my setup. What really helped me was pairing the VRM data with a separate energy monitor on the incoming supply — I use a Hildebrand Glow, which pulls from the smart meter and gives me whole-home consumption. Once you've got that alongside your Victron data, you can cross-reference what the solar is actually contributing versus what's being drawn from the grid for charging. Not a single unified dashboard sadly, but running both side by side on a tablet mount has become second nature. @DaiBennett the variable load issue is real — the Zappi's eco mode helps smooth that out a bit if you're not already using it.