In the case of the Open Charge Point Protocol (OCPP), we have a good thing going for us. It makes it easy to set up big networks of charging stations, and charging station owners can quickly change if a provider goes out of business or there is an emergency. It could also lower prices across the board.
The Open Charge Point Protocol (OCPP) is a communication system used by open EV chargers and charging station management systems (CSMS).
OCPP is an application protocol that allows communication between charging stations for electric vehicles (EVs) and their central management system. Simply put, an application protocol is a structure that allows vastly different programs to interact with one another, such as cell phones and smart refrigerators, or Bluetooth speakers and laptops. Consider it similar to a translation program in that it converts messages from one device or program into a format that another device or program can understand and use.
OCPP is a freely available platform to build an EV charging station front-end. The front-end is the ‘public face’ of an EV charging station and will represent the system to end-users. It communicates with backend systems, registers drivers, and displays information such as pricing, drivers, and availability of charging spots.
OCPP is mainly written in PHP and Javascript, and it’s developed in a DRY (don’t repeat yourself) way via a front-end framework called Bootstrap. Bootstrap is a very popular web development framework by Twitter, aiming to ease the process of front-end development.
OCPP is based on Electron, the same platform used by Slack, Discord, and Atom. And we love these apps. We use them every day. We want our app to be as simple and elegant as possible, drawing inspiration from Slack.
Why is it cool? We’ve seen a lot of people build charging station front-ends. These front-ends are all proprietary. That means they are built in a closed-source way and are not available to the public to view or use.
This is particularly concerning if their business model is based on selling their front-end. For example, a company might have an app for iOS or Android. They’ve spent a lot of time and effort making it look good and usable. But there’s no open source license available, and even if there was, it’s completely locked up. You can’t see how it works, and you certainly can’t see how to fix bugs.
Furthermore, the business model is a barrier to entry. If you have to pay for the app, users may not install it on their own because they aren’t sure if they will ever use it.
A full package is the only thing that makes the two different. OCP stands for “open-source, community-driven, platform-independent, integrate-charge-station,” which is fully functional and has all the modules needed to run a charging station, like drivers, stations, reports, analytics, and more.
There is a front-end called OCPP for OCPI. OCPP is the interface for users, and it only shows information about charging stations, like drivers, stations, prices, and batteries.
OCPP is a charging station application that works with OCPI, and it is an easy way for a charging station operator to show information about the stations, battery, and different prices for different items.
For developers, OCPP is a great way to get started with Ocpi so you can manage drivers, stations, and batteries easily.
If you like to develop your own charging station, then OCPP is the best place to start. It also helps you manage chargers and batteries for your own personal business. It is still early days for OCPP, and it is likely that the project will evolve over time.
