ISO 15118 and OCPP 2.0: The dream team for Smart Charging?
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In the past months, Charge Point Operators (CPO), electric fleet managers, and electric utilities have been increasingly reading about ISO 15118, which specifies the communication between an electric vehicle charging station and an electric vehicle (EV). The energy market hopes that the industry-standard ISO 15118 will provide a bi-directional digital communication standard based on the internet protocol. ampcontrol.io has summarized essential applications of ISO 15118 and has analyzed the effect on Smart Charging use cases (V1G and V2).
ISO 15118 is “more” than user authorization and a “security layer”
ISO 15118 provides a Plug & Charge mechanism that has already been well described by Hubject and has-to-be. It represents an identification and authorization mode, where the EV driver and user of the EV charging station can plug his electric vehicle into the charging station (EVSE) without any additional user authorization (RFID card or mobile app). Imagine a driver of a combustion car using the gas station without any credit card! Car manufacturers and charging station producers apply a similar concept of the World Wide Web called Public Key Infrastructures (PKI). Both sides are authenticating themselves through a Public Key Infrastructures (PKI) model. That’s one significant advantage of ISO 15118.
However, ISO 15118 is not just limited to the authentication of users and to encrypt messages (although this is a significant improvement). Equally important is that ISO 15118 enables EV and charging stations to transfer energy data between each other. Accurate energy data from the EV allows the central software systems to make better decisions for concepts of load management (also called Smart Charging).
More data leads to better Smart Charging
Smart Charging describes different concepts of controlling the charging process of EVs. One significant technique is to reduce peaks for the charging networks to avoid high charging costs (demand charges).
To control the amount of energy that an EV may draw from a charging station, it is…
