1.Overview

EFEV Charging Solutions’ vision is to provide the best charging equipment which is enabled with the latest Technologies and standardize as per government policies and norms. We all know that nowadays it is exceedingly difficult to breathe fresh air in most of the cities. Driving an electric vehicle can help you reduce your carbon footprint because there will be zero tailpipe emissions. You can reduce the environmental impact of charging your vehicle further by choosing renewable energy options for home electricity.

We at EFEV are also concerned about it, hence we are continuously churning ourselves to contribute for green earth by providing the best solutions of green energy infra by manufacturing our own EV Vehicles (3 Wheelers) and EV Charging stations.

Considering the safety of the end user, EFEV is following proposed government standards and regulations and at the same time with our latest cutting-edge technology we are giving the best product to customers.

As we all know, Electric vehicles (EV) are becoming the new standard for mobility all over the world. This development is only possible with good coverage of charging stations. The challenges for the EV market are not only the charging infrastructure, but also the openness of communication protocols to ensure the possibility of switching from charging network without necessarily replacing all the charging stations, including their interoperability for electric grid services. Open Charge Point Protocol (OCPP) addresses this challenge by being the industry-supported de facto standard for communication between EV charging station and EV Vehicle. OCPP is an open standard with no cost or licensing barriers for adoption. To support such a big EV Infrastructure OCPP is the standard, which is quite beneficial to handle such complex Infrastructure. OCPP can support all the features to EV Server/Charger Point Operation (CPO) provider to give the best experience and accessibility to the customer.

E-Fill EV Charger both AC EV Charger and DC EV Charger support interoperability of communication to any of CPO provider with the help of OCPP. Chargers can be easily integrated to any CPO provider who chooses to standardize their CPO over OCPP. This standardization enables innovations and cost efficiencies. As E-fill provides OCPP Integrated chargers, hence they will not need any kind of licensing so there is no barrier to the adoption of E-fill EV Chargers.

2.What is OCPP?

OCPP stands for ‘Open Charge Point Protocol’.

OCPP is a standard protocol which handles the Complexity of the EV charging stations requires remote control and management.

It was originally developed in 2009 by E-Laad foundation (now ElaadNL) and now supported by the Open Charge Alliance (OCA).

E-Fill Electric provides the best charging solution which includes EV Charger enabled with OCPP which helps to access charger live status, Charger availability, Charger location also provides access to customer to start stop charging sessions, monitoring session and billing easily on E-Fill Mobile App (available of Android and Apple both).

E-Fill chargers are made to work in unmanned situations which gives the customers ease to manage their charging sessions as per their own requirement.

OCPP helps the EVSE and CMS to communicate with each other by creating an open platform.

3.Some basic operation supported via OCPP:

• Authorize E-Fill EV Charger user for managing charging session.

OCPP Enable managing charging sessions online, OCPP communicate with server backend and transport necessary information between charger and server. By using features of OCPP like RemotestartTransaction, StartTransaction, RemoteStopTransaction, StopTransaction User can easily start and stop transactions using E-Fill Mobile App which is connected to charger over OCPP.

• Remote modification of charger configuration/Settings.

OCPP gives the capability to server to change settings of the charger via App/Server, Admin can manage settings like Protections, Energy rate etc. along with some OCPP required configurations.

• Charger real time status

OCPP provides capability to charger to publish its status to the server so that user can get a real-time status of the charger which obviously save customer time and give better idea of the nearest available charging stations.

Some Status published to server by charger in StatusNotification message are:

Available: When Charger is available for user, it shows that Charger is OK.

Unavailable: When charger is not available due to some maintenance or fault.

Fault: When charger has some kind of fault for e.g. Abnormal Voltage/Current, SPD Fail, Power failure etc.

Charging: While the charger is already in process of charging a vehicle.

Preparing: When vehicle is connected to the charger and charger is under process to start charging.

Finishing: When vehicle is connected to the charger and charger is under process to Stop charging.

With the help of all above status of EV Charger user can notify accordingly over APP/Server.

• EVSE fault diagnosis

OCPP also allows servers to collect fault diagnosis data using a few OCPP Commands.

Charger keeps track of faults which can be transmitted to any server using OCPP Commands.

• Firmware management

OCPP also give capability to charger to update firmware and share its notification with server using FirwareUpdate commands. Admin can update firmware to a charger remotely.

4. OCPP Versions Used by E-Fill EV Chargers

• E—Fill Chargers provide integration of OCPP on latest versions and provide provision to Upgrade versions using configuration. OCPP1.6(J) and OCPP2.0(J).

5.Benefits of OCPP:

• Interoperability– OCPP Enables interoperability in EV chargers and servers. This means charger from any EV Manufacturer can integrated with any server provider, charger and server should have OCPP Enabled. This makes the EVSE infra less costly and completely independent.

• Make procurement Customer friendly– A customer can get chargers from multiple vendors and can integrate them on same or different servers as per his choice.

• Universal Protocol for EV-EVSE-Because OCPP is a EV-EVSE Agnostic protocol which has no licensing barriers makes OCPP adoptable for all.

• Upgradable –OCPP is free to all to upgrade and new features can be easily

• Supports Smart Charging–OCPP allows user to control its session live also provide live data for Meter Values, Energy consumed, power in meter Values packet, based on that server can calculate tariff in real time.

6.What is Smart Charging?

Optimal Scheduling of Charging: – User can select its charging session according to different conditions like Energy how much energy user want to draw, according to amount like for how much amount he wants to charge, Time user can schedule charging session for a particular time period. All these features are can be integrated for user experience using OCPP.

Control Supply to Each Vehicle:-OCPP allows to control Each and every Gun independently.

Integration with Grid: – OCPP (Above 1.6) allow to integration of grid to support during peak times.

Regulate Total Energy Consumption: – Smart Charging Enables Regulate Total Energy Consumption and associate cost by taking in to account few factors like Load capacity time updated tariff and availability of renewable power.

7. Summary

As per all of the benefits and usages of OCPP it is clear that to establish the EV Infra OCPP is playing an important role to give user, manufacturer, server/CPO provider an optimize solution, bring interoperability to the charger and server, adding perks of cost optimization in EV Business by providing a license free, free of cost OCPP protocol.

By: Pradeep Kumar
Team EVSE
E-Fill Electric