Energy Management — the feature that turned a charger into an energy manager

If you’re already a LEKTRI.CO customer, you know our stations do far more than push current into your car. For years now, the Energy Management (EM) module has been the heart of our ecosystem — and the difference between a simple well-behaved wallbox and a charger that genuinely understands what’s happening in your home.

Here’s a quick recap of what EM does and why it has become the standard for lektri.co users:

  • Smart Load Balancing — the station reads your home’s total consumption in real time and adjusts charging power so the sum never exceeds the contracted limit of your main connection. Turn on the oven while the car is charging at 22 kW? The station automatically scales charging down, then ramps back up when household demand drops. No tripped breakers, no input from you.
  • Three charging modes — Power (maximum available power), Hybrid (combines solar surplus with grid energy) and Green (charges exclusively from PV production). Three different philosophies, one slider in the app.
  • Power Sharing across stations — two cars, one connection, automatic power distribution.
  • Native PV integration — the station detects grid injection and modulates the charging current to match the solar surplus produced at any moment.

All of these features rely on one essential building block: a smart meter installed right after your utility meter, reporting consumption and production in real time. From day one, we chose Shelly as the partner for this component — a de-facto standard in the energy IoT world, known for reliability, an active developer community, and a quality-to-price ratio that’s hard to beat.

Up to this point, the story was simple and worked well. Except the Shelly world has grown. A lot.

The next step: your LEKTRI.CO now works with any Shelly

Over recent months, our firmware team in Timișoara has been working on something our advanced users kept flagging: the Shelly catalogue has expanded dramatically — new generations (Gen2, Gen3), single-phase and three-phase variants, EM, 3EM and Pro 3EM models, devices with direct measurement or current-transformer-based readings. Not all of them were immediately supported by our station. In practice, that meant a customer with the “wrong” Shelly already in the home (perhaps installed for another purpose) had to buy a new one dedicated to the charger.

That’s no longer the case. Starting with this release, LEKTRI.CO is compatible with the entire Shelly range — every generation and every relevant energy-measurement variant.

What this change actually involved

This isn’t a checkbox toggled in firmware. The entire communication layer with the meter has been rewritten so that:

  • the station automatically detects the generation and model of the Shelly it finds on the network;
  • it correctly maps measurement channels, whether you’re using a single-phase device or a three-phase 3EM with three current transformers;
  • it handles the protocol differences between generations (from HTTP/REST in older devices to the new RPC protocol introduced in Gen2 and Gen3);
  • Smart Load Balancing stays robust regardless of the reporting latency and refresh rate of each individual model.

For you, all of that complexity stays invisible. In the lektri.co app the flow remains exactly the same — pick “Shelly”, follow the configuration steps, and the station handles the rest.

Why this matters for you

1. More installation freedom. Your electrician no longer has to order a specific model. They can use whatever’s available locally — or whatever you already have in your electrical panel.

2. Reuse what you have. If a Shelly is already installed in your home for monitoring, automation, or prosumer functions, you can now use the same device for the station’s EM. One piece of hardware, two roles.

3. Future-proof. As Shelly releases new generations, your station won’t fall behind. OTA updates will keep extending the list of supported models — no hardware swaps required.

4. Faster installs, lower costs. Fewer trips for additional parts, fewer reconfigurations, fewer surprises at the end of the job.

What’s next

Universal Shelly compatibility is one piece of a broader roadmap. We’re working on deeper integrations with photovoltaic systems, battery storage, and smart-home platforms. The goal remains the one we started with: making the lektri.co station the smartest — and least demanding — component in your electrical setup.

If you already have a LEKTRI.CO EM configured, the update reaches you automatically over the air. If you’ve been thinking about adding the module, this is the right moment — whichever Shelly you choose will work.

Charge smart. We’ll handle the rest.