Is Victron intending to add OCPP 2.x protocol support to the EV chargers?

Q&A and troubleshooting
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Is Victron intending to add OCPP 2.x protocol support to the EV chargers?

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This would be a very welcome feature !
A CCS charger that can integrate with the Victron ecosystem would be very nice as well.

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We are looking into it, but it’s not on our short term list. Sorry!

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Hello Lucian,

Well I think it would be excellent if Victron Energy were able to do this - it would obviously broaden the market for the EV charger product line considerably (beyond ‘existing Victron sites’), and by side effect it could well lead to more interest in purchasing other Victron Energy products from people who might start out with just a charger. The chargers are super products - cost effective and they work really well.

My key followup question is this :slight_smile:

Do you have, in your view, enough ‘headroom’ in the firmware of the existing products, to do this ?

e.g. Is there enough on-board storage space and RAM to support (in principle at least) adding in OCPP support code to the firmware, concurrently with what is already in there?

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Can you give me an example, you said above “people who might start out with just a charger.” - where that charger would be used so OCPP is important?

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Hi Lucian,

EV chargers exist from various vendors, typically as standalone products - there are lots of them out there, and many (arguably, most) of them support OCPP.

The Victron Energy chargers are cost effective (lower in cost than many others in the market with similar technical capability) - except that those other brands do have OCPP support in them already and Victron Energy does not.

There is a new market available here for Victron Energy - which is to sell EV chargers in to sites who are using solar/battery inverter/charger hardware from other companies.

The pre-requisite for a Victron Energy EV charger to ‘drop in’ to a third party energy system is OCPP, because that’s the standard way to allow a third party energy system to dynamically control the operation of the charger.

There are plenty of energy optimisation systems that can leverage an OCPP compatible charger to perform tasks like ‘charge on surplus solar’ and/or to charge when the grid price is lowest, etc.

If Victron Energy supported OCPP, then you might be able to sell a lot more EV chargers to customers who are not otherwise ‘Victron Based’.

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Using that same logic victron could add OCPP caperbility to the victron system not just it’s chagers. This may help sell victron inverters etc to owners of existing OCPP capable chargers .

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OCPP is mostly used for public installation, for control and payment reasons. The current version power measurement is not precise and shouldn’t be used for applications like this.
EVCS v1 was designed to be used for house applications, where OCPP, in my opinion, does not make any sense.
On V2, for sure it will be added somehow, either on EVCS side or GX side.

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Lucian, here is another substantial commercial reason to support OCPP:

South Australia (where I live) is one of the most ‘renewable intense’ grids on the planet - and is having to solve problems all other grid operators will face as their own grids become more renewable later.

So this state requirement - that all new chargers must support OCPP so the grid operator can have emergency access to them… you can expect this sort of thing to spread around the world over time.

This means that not having OCPP will become a reason why customers can NOT buy the Victron product, in more and more grids around the world.

Just pointing this out to give you a solid commercial reason to move the implementation of OCPP support higher up the priority list, if you are prepared to do so.

Kind Regards,
Simon

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Thanks @simonhackett, how fast is this needed?
Is ok if the GX device is doing the OCPP communication? Or is mandatory to have it on the EVCS? I’m asking because it might be faster to do it on the GX side, where we have more CPU power.

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I don’t think it’s an emergency, Lucian, but I do think there is merit in getting on with it some time in 2025 at least. I think that implementing it in the GX would be just fine - in the end, the grid operators don’t care really about the IP endpoint, they just care about the outcome.

In case of existing grid operator control points over things like solar export in South Australia, there is definitely no issue with certifying an intermediate device on the customer site that acts as an agent for the actual solar/battery system. Many such devices are operating for that purpose now, in this state.

… So I see no reason why this would not also apply for car chargers.

In fact, it is probably better to use the GX because it would be capable of operating on behalf of more than one downstream charger, managing total power draw, rather than having to have separate connections for each charging device.