FAQ

The Open Charge Alliance is a formed industry alliance of EV charging hardware and software vendors, and charging network operators and service providers. OCA’s mission is to foster global development, adoption, and compliance of the Open Charge Point Protocol (OCPP) and related standards through collaboration, education and testing.

OCA was formed to continue and extend the work of the OCPP Forum, adding an international dimension, stronger organizational structure, and capabilities for protocol compliancy and formal certification.

OCA’s Originating Members are ElaadNL, the EV charging network operator launched by a consortium of Netherlands DSOs (utilities); ESB, the Irish national utility; and Greenlots (Shell), a North American vendor of open standards-based EV charging solutions. In 2015 the board has grown with two new members. The positions of the two additional board members are currently filled by Total EV Charge an electric vehicle smart charging solutions company specialized in energy optimization and Pionix GmbH . Click on the link for a personal description of the board members.

The Open Charge Alliance is focused on the development of the Open Charge Point Protocol (OCPP) and Open Smart Charging Protocol (OSCP). OCA is also promoting and informing stakeholders about OCPP and OSCP worldwide, and developing alliance membership services and market/business value.

OCA provides members with the opportunity to help shape current and future versions of the different specifications to meet their market and product requirements. By leveraging the technical expertise, market intelligence, and industry leadership of its members, OCA can help drive the adoption of open standards and deliver low-cost, interoperable and universal EV charging infrastructure. Next to this members get a significant discount on the purchase of a testing tool and certification of your OCPP implmentation. The ultimate goal of OCA is to provide a superior experience for drivers, site owners, network operators, and the entire EV industry.

The specification for OCPP v1.5 was published in 2012 and is being used in multiple charging networks today. In 2015 OCA has published OCPP 1.6 and in 2018 OCPP 2.0 is published with an update in 2020 as an OCPP 2.0.1 version. OCA has released in 2016 the Compliance Testing Tool for OCPP 1.6 and the Compliance Testing Tool for 2.0.1 (OCTT 2) was released in 2023. OSCP 1.0 was released in 2014 and OSCP 2.0 in 2020. As mentioned many versions of OCPP and OSCP have been released through the years. However, not all of the versions are giving support by OCA anymore. Support is available for OCPP 1.6 and OCPP 2.o.1. Click on the link below to find a detailed description of OCA’s history.

The OCA Membership categories and annual fees can be found in this link.

The Open Charge Alliance only provides the OCPP protocol specification, we do not provide any software libraries.

For OCPP 1.6 and OCPP 2.0.1 we provide a test tool that you can use for testing your implementation. This tool is also used for the certification program. If you would like more information about buying this tool, please click on the link below.

OCPP is a protocol between a Charging Station and a CSMS. Roaming between other networks is out of scope for OCPP and can be done using other protocols. At the moment there is not only one standard available and every party can decide to implement a different protocol according to their needs. As examples, OCHP (Open Clearing House Protocol) has been certified open source and is mainly suited for hubs, while OCPI (Open Charge Point Interface) is a peer-to-peer protocol and it is not open source. Other examples are OICP (Open Interchange Protocol) and eMIP (eMobility Inter-operation Protocol). You can find more information on the respective websites: http://www.ochp.eu/ and https://ocpi-protocol.org/.

OCPP is an open protocol between a Charging Station and a CSMS. The benefits for the EV drive when it comes to functionality really depends on what functionality is made available via this CSMS and what is implemented in the Charging Station. This could, for example, be a form of Smart Charging or reservations. This can differ per market or even per implementation.

In general open standards encourage innovation and competition, which translates into better services, lower prices and more new services for end users.

OCPP works for any managed Charging Station. Depending on the needs of the end user, not all functionality might be implemented. For households functionalities such as firmware management (providing updates), remote control (e.g. via an app) or smart charging functionality might be used.

No, the OCA itself does not provide paid consultancy. However, we are working on an e-learning in which the OCPP enginering skills will be shared. The e-learning is expected to be launched end of q1 2024. If you need something more than the e-learning we can provide some help as we are an alliance of companies from the EV industry. We have an OCA member mailing list. We can forward your request to our members, some of which do offer paid consultancy.

For information about the test tool, the latest price and versions. Please click on the link below.

We currently have a fixed number of OCPP certification test laboratory locations around the world, that were chosen based on the fact that we expect there is a large enough EV market for a certification lab. Once the EV market grows and the labs cannot keep up with the amount of certifications or we feel the need for adding a lab for a specific region, we will inform the community about the selection process.

Yes, the list can be found in appendix C of the OCPP Test Procedure & Test Plans, that is part of the Certification documentation. This can be found in the link below.

As a bit of background: in the certification program only the OCPP communication is certified, changes to a Charging Station that are not relevant for the OCPP communication, will not lead to re-certifying an implementation. Furthermore, a certificate is valid for a specific “OCPP software version”. We know this is a “grey area”, but we have covered this in the documentation by defining the OCPP software version as: “the version of all the software that parses and generates OCPP messages and any part of the software that influences the sequence, timing and content of messages”.

Although the (changed) DataTransfer messages itself are not part of the conformance test, these are considered part of what influences the OCPP software version. So if the DataTransfer messages are changed, the OCPP software version changes and the certificate is not valid for that newer version anymore. However, the certificate remains valid for the older version of the software.

Please note: whether you want to re-certify this newer version is up to you. It is not mandatory to re-certify every version of your software from an OCA perspective.

No, the OCTT does not generate a certificate as proof that you successfully completed the certification program. If you go for certification, an independent test laboratory will use the OCTT to create a test report. After successful completion of all required test cases, the OCA will generate / award the certificate. For more details, please refer to the OCPP Certification Procedure that can be found in the link below.