OpenOCPP is an implementation of the Open Charge Point Protocol. It is the industry's first pre-certified embedded software stack that supports both OCPP 1.6J and 2.0.1.
Built by ChargeLab and released under an Apache 2.0 open-source license, OpenOCPP eliminates traditional barriers to OCPP implementation.
OpenOCPP was designed by engineers at ChargeLab to meet the most stringent standards for efficiency, security, and protocol compliance.
Bring your EV charger to market faster with OpenOCPP. Save time and money using our open-source solution.
OpenOCPP was founded by ChargeLab's team of experts, but will scale thanks to contributors like you.
“OpenOCPP allowed us to significantly shorten our firmware development timeline when designing our first EV charger. OpenOCPP gives us a fully compliant and secure OCPP stack, allowing FractalEV to focus on differentiation—like our industry-leading commissioning process, maintenance tools, and touchscreen.”
OCPP is an open communication protocol for electric vehicle supply equipment (EVSEs)—also known as "EV chargers." OCPP is the shared language spoken between EV chargers and back-end management software.
While EV chargers come out of the box ready to dispense energy to vehicles, they do not come with energy management, payment, user management, or other intelligent features built in. For these capabilities, an EV charger must connect to a back-end software, which we call a charging station management system (CSMS). This is where OCPP comes in, providing a communication standard between EVSE and CSMS.
The vision of OCPP is to make any EV charger work with any charger management software, even if the charger manufacturer and software developer have never met and are building their products on the opposite side of the world.
While OCPP provides communication guidelines, it does not implement this communication. A good analogy for OCPP is the internet itself: HTTP defines a communication protocol between the server that hosts your favourite website and the web browser you use to access that website. But HTTP itself is neither a server, nor a web browser—it is simply the communication protocol that both parties have agreed on.
OpenOCPP provides a full client-side implementation of OCPP. It is an embedded software stack that runs on your EV charger, enabling compliance with OCPP 1.6J, 2.0.1, and future protocol versions.
Using the analogy above, OpenOCPP is like Chromium. Chromium is a free and open-source web browser project. Popular browsers like Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, and Opera are all built on top of Chromium. HTTP acts as the communication standard for the web, while Chromium provides a reference implementation for how to build a browser.
Just like with Chromium, each EV charger manufacturer that adopts OpenOCPP will adapt the code for their specific hardware. OpenOCPP provides a free, open-sourced reference implementation to accelerate and standardize OCPP adoption.
Embedded software is specialized software written to run on devices that are not typically thought of as computers. This includes appliances, vehicles, routers, and of course, electric vehicle chargers. Embedded software is what makes devices "smart." In the case of EV chargers, embedded software handles the EVSE's connection to back-end management software using OCPP.
Embedded software is responsible understanding the state of an EV charger and reporting it back to the CSMS, such as whether the charger is available, faulted, or actively charging. It also takes commands from the CSMS to start charging, stop charging, or change its output power.
ChargeLab's core business is back-end software for managing EV chargers (ChargeLab CSMS). While deploying ChargeLab CSMS, we've integrated over 200 EV charger models that each speak a unique flavour of OCPP. We understand the challenges that come with writing an OCPP communication stack from the ground up. We have also seen first-hand how different protocol interpretations lead to problems once EV chargers are deployed in the field.
With OpenOCPP, we are providing a standard OCPP implementation that manufacturers can use to build their future EV chargers. This will result in faster EVSE/CSMS integration, improved reliability, and a smoother go-to-market for all parties. In short: Everyone wins!
Yes. ChargeLab's team is actively developing new features and capabilities for OpenOCPP, which will be published to the open-source project on GitHub. We are also looking for collaborators to contribute to the project. If you are an EV charger manufacturer, CSMS provider, university/college researcher, or even an enthusiastic individual, please reach out to our team to learn how you can help make EV charging more standardized for everyone.
Yes, we would love to help. OpenOCPP will always be open-source and free to use. Consultation and implementation support from ChargeLab's team is available for a fee.
