OCPP/OCPI platform: electric vehicle charging

Context Car parks, local authorities, companies with an electric fleet, property managers and landlords: all of them have charging stations to keep running and drivers to serve, often with stations from different brands. Web-Duarte designed and built the platform that supervises and controls them remotely, from software architecture to production. Two standard protocols at the heart of the project • OCPP (Open Charge Point Protocol), versions 1.6, 2.0.1 and 2.1: the common language between each charging station and the platform. Version 1.6 runs on most stations on the market, versions 2.0.1 and 2.1 are the most recent, and each station connects with the version it uses • OCPI (Open Charge Point Interface), version 2.2.1: roaming, like a phone using a partner operator’s network abroad. Drivers subscribed to other mobility operators charge on the network with their usual badge or app Supervision and remote actions • The live status of every connector: available, charging, paused, unavailable or faulted, and whether the station is online • During a charge: energy delivered, duration and the driver’s badge • Remotely: start or stop a charge, unlock a stuck cable, take a connector or a whole station out of service, restart the station, read its configuration, request a diagnostics file • Sensitive actions ask for confirmation, and the station’s response is displayed • An alert by email, text message or mobile notification when a station stops reporting Drivers and energy • RFID badges managed from the platform: assigned to a person, expiry date, a lost badge blocked at once, badges grouped under a “fleet” badge • Estimated energy use per station, per connector and per badge over the chosen period, with the details of each charge: the basis for reimbursing or sharing electricity costs • Reserving a connector for a badge until a chosen time • Charging profiles: a maximum power for the station, a connector or the current charge, with time slots (for example 22 kW at night and 11 kW during the day) OCPI roaming, as charge point operator (CPO) • Stations published with their live availability and their price per kWh • Partner badges authorized within seconds with the driver’s operator, while internal badges and blocks take precedence • Charges started and stopped from the driver’s operator app • Energy sent about every 2 minutes during the charge, then one charge detail record (CDR) per charge: date, duration, kWh, location, price excluding and including VAT • Reliable exchanges: every message to partners is stored, retried automatically when a partner is unavailable and logged, and each partner has its own access keys Security and availability • A station must be registered before it can connect: any other is refused on connection • The station server runs independently of the interface: charges continue if the interface stops, and after a restart it picks up the charges in progress • Micro-services architecture: independent software building blocks, each in its own Docker container Outcome A platform that brings stations of every brand into one tool, gives operators the figures for each charge and opens their stations to drivers from other networks.