Your EV chargers in Home Assistant, without giving up billing

Which one you need

The two do not mix on the same charger: the charger connects to one server. Pick by who needs to bill, not by which one has more sensors.

Chargers in different places, in the same Home Assistant

Each charger talks to askacharge.com over its own internet connection, and Home Assistant asks askacharge.com. That is why the charger and Home Assistant do not need to be on the same network: the one at home, the one at work and the one at the holiday home show up together, each as a device with its status, its energy and its charging switch.

• No open ports, no certificate wrangling. Connections only go outwards: the charger calls askacharge.com and so does Home Assistant. With the OCPP integration, Home Assistant is the server, so a charger away from home has to reach it: a port forward on the router, a VPN or a reverse proxy with a certificate. Behind a company firewall, often not even that.
• Any brand. Manufacturer integrations also work remotely, but only with their own chargers. Here a V2C at home and a Circutor at work look the same, because both speak standard OCPP.
• What it asks in return: internet at each charger (if the one at work loses its network, it shows as disconnected) and data every 30 seconds, not instantly.

Are they your own home chargers and nobody pays to use them? We're preparing askacharge.com/casa for exactly that: the first one free. It isn't open yet; you can join the waiting list.

1. Install it

1. In HACS: ⋮ → Custom repositories → https://github.com/javierojan/askacharge-homeassistant, category Integration.
2. Install askacharge.com and restart Home Assistant.
3. Settings → Devices & services → Add integration → askacharge.com, and paste the API key.

Without HACS, copy custom_components/askacharge from the repository into your config/custom_components/.

2. The key: only what it needs

Create it in the askacharge.com panel, API Keys menu:

Nothing else: it cannot reset, update firmware or change prices. Every write it makes is in the panel's API key activity log. Do not limit the key to a location: the live view covers the whole brand and a location-limited key is refused there.

3. What appears

One device per charger, refreshed every 30 seconds with a single request for all of them:

4. Tested in production

On 7 October 2026, against askacharge.com with a simulated charger, this is what the integration read:

// switch on → remote start
start: {"status": "Accepted", "id_tag": "PANEL"}
// 5 s later
status: Charging · session open · energy 0.0 kWh
// 10 s after that, first meter reading
status: Charging · energy 0.17 kWh · power 20.34 kW
// switch off → remote stop, 5 s later
status: Finishing · no session

The test found a fault on our side: the live view reported 0 kWh until the session ended, because the energy was only calculated on the stop. It now comes from the last meter reading, for this integration and for the panel's dashboard.

5. Two automations to start with

Entity IDs come from the charger's name and your Home Assistant language: copy them from the device page. Here, a charger called GARAGE-01 in an English-language Home Assistant.

Tell me when the car has finished:

automation:
  - alias: "Charge finished"
    triggers:
      - trigger: state
        entity_id: binary_sensor.garage_01_charging
        from: "on"
        to: "off"
    actions:
      - action: notify.mobile_app_my_phone
        data:
          message: "Charging finished: {{ states('sensor.garage_01_session_energy') }} kWh"

Warn me if a charger drops off the network for more than ten minutes:

automation:
  - alias: "Charger offline"
    triggers:
      - trigger: state
        entity_id: binary_sensor.garage_01_online
        to: "off"
        for: "00:10:00"
    actions:
      - action: notify.mobile_app_my_phone
        data:
          message: "The garage charger has been offline for 10 minutes"

Limits worth knowing

• Starting from Home Assistant uses the brand's PANEL card, like the Start button in the panel, and is billed with that card's tariff.
• It polls every 30 seconds. For instant events (a charger going offline, a session ending) askacharge.com also sends signed webhooks, which you can receive in Home Assistant with a webhook trigger.
• Power and energy are as fresh as the charger's readings. askacharge.com sets the reading interval to 60 s when a charger boots if it can; a charger that refuses keeps its own.
• It is not in the HACS default list yet: you add it as a custom repository.

Code, issues and releases: github.com/javierojan/askacharge-homeassistant (MIT). The rest of the API is in the technical documentation.