What is OCPP | Advantages of OCPP in EV Charging stations

This page on OCPP protocol describes what is OCPP and mentions benefits or advantages of OCPP in EVCS (Electric Vehicle Charging Station).

There are three types of networks used in charging stations for electric vehicle charging vizz. non-networked, closed networks and open networks. Non-network stations are not connected to any network. Closed networks are proprietary protocols used to communicate between station and server. Owners of charging stations must use this proprietary services. They can not use open standard based EVSE equipments. Open networks allow owners of charging stations to make use of multiple open networks. Owners can use different open standards based networking equipments on the same hardware without any upgradation. Let us understand OCPP Protocol basics.

What is OCPP (Open Charge Point Protocol) ?

Introduction:
OCPP has been developed to create open application protocol which allows EV charging stations and CMS (Central Management System) from different manufacturers to communicate with each other. OCPP stands for Open Charge Point Protocol. OCPP is a protocol between charging station and network management system. EV charging network allows owners to communicate with their charging stations and charging stations to communicate with their power grid. The OCPP and OSCP (Open Smart Charging Protocol)have been developed by OCA (Open Charge Alliance) which is a global consortium of public and private EV (Electric Vehicle) infrastructure leaders.

Electric Vehicle Charging System

Figure depicts entire EV charging system. As shown OCPP is used between EVSE (i.e. Charging Station) and central system. ISO 15118 and IEC 61851 is used between EVSE (Electric Vehicle Supply Equipment) and EV (Electric Vehicle). The OCPP is a SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) based protocol. As we know, HTTP sits on top of TCP/IP where as SOAP sits on top of HTTP. Hence SOAP uses XML style encoding for messages which are sent over HTTP or FTP or SMTP. Refer SOAP vs HTTP >> for more information on SOAP over HTTP.

Following is the list of OCPP (Open Charge Point Protocol) versions released.
• OCPP 1.5 released in 2013
• OCPP 1.6 released in 2015
• OCPP 2.0 released in 2018

Benefits or advantages of OCPP (Open Charge Point Protocol)

Following are the benefits or advantages of OCPP:
➨Flexibility: Open standards based protocol such as OCPP offers flexibility and choice. It allows users to choose from many different hardware and software. It offers flexibility to match charging hardware with NMS (Network Management System).
➨Choice: OCPP compliant charging stations offer selection of charging network provider in users hands.
➨Interoperability: Open networks enable interoperability between equipments from different manufacturers. OCPP is de-facto network protocol throughout the Europe and it is used in 78 countries on every continent.
➨Scalability: It is easy to change equipments and to scale the system as per need. This allows owners to optimize cost and risk of one time investments.
➨Plug and Play: Owners can easily add new options and capabilities to existing chargers.
➨New Features: There are new features added in OCPP 2.0 such as extended security, display for tariffs and costs, monitoring for operator and so on.

Conclusion: In order to understand benefits or advantages of OCPP one has to understand electric vehicle charging system where OCPP has been widely used across the globe.



IoT Wireless Technologies

WLAN    ➤THREAD    ➤EnOcean    ➤LoRa    ➤SIGFOX    ➤WHDI   
Zigbee   ➤6LoWPAN   ➤Zigbee RF4CE   ➤Z-Wave   ➤NFC   ➤RFID   ➤INSTEON  

Advantages and Disadvantages of other wireless technologies

IrDA    HomeRF    Bluetooth    Radar    RF    Wireless    Internet    Mobile Phone    IoT    Solar Energy    Fiber Optic    Satellite    GPS    RFID    AM and FM    LTE   

What is difference between

MQTT vs DDS   MQTT vs HTTP   MQTT vs REST   MQTT vs SMQTT   HTTP vs HTTPS   OSI vs TCPIP  TCP vs UDP  FTP vs HTTP   FTP vs SMTP   FTP vs TFTP   ARP vs RARP   NAT vs PAT   RIP vs OSPF  SLIP vs PPP  IMAP4 vs POP3  IPV4 vs IPV6 

RF and Wireless Terminologies