Proposal 5 – Establishing minimum technical requirements for smart chargepoints

20 November 2019

Industry to agree minimum requirements to facilitate the management of the electricity network.

A fundamental driver for smart charging is to reduce the need to provide extra electricity network capacity, especially for the low voltage network, and generation capacity to support the uptake of EVs. EV chargepoints could play an important role as part of a smarter and more flexible energy system. Smart charging is most relevant when the EV is connected for longer than normally required to achieve a full charge. These are typically the ‘duration’ charging events: off-street residential, on-street and destination charging. The requirements for smart charging should be restricted to these forms of charging. This is in line with the proposals in the OLEV Electric Vehicle Smart Charging Consultation and the Electric Vehicle Energy Taskforce supports this proposal. 

To be effective, this will require further forms of interoperability, meaning that a smart chargepoint must retain its full functionality without intervention when:

a) the user switches electricity supplier; and/or 

b) the user switches to another EV brand and/or model. 

Consumers should also have confidence that their charger will continue to give a degree of smart operation, such as being locally programmable, even if the charge point operator ceases to support the charge point, for whatever reason. 

To achieve this will require further minimum technical requirements for EV smart chargepoints to be introduced to OLEV’s EV minimum technical specification , setting out the detailed functional capabilities of the chargepoint as appropriate for the chargepoint’s application (on-street, off-street, destination and any others). It is further proposed that V2G should have its own minimum requirements but these should not be included in the other applications at this time. The powers set out in the Automated and Electric Vehicles Act [30] provide the foundation for the introduction of such requirements and can be used to enforce these requirements. In particular: 

The consumer information that must be collected by the chargepoint;

• The ability for users to opt out of smart charging default settings;
• The rate of charge that domestic chargers revert to in the case of a communication network disruption; 
• The minimum functional requirements for a smart charger or chargepoint, as appropriate for its application (these are set out more fully in the detailed Work Package 3 Report); and
• The provision of smart operation when the chargepoint is no longer supported by the CPO.
• Consideration of how to ensure compliance with the minimum requirements when this is nolonger ensured by compliance with the Electric Vehicle Homecharge Scheme.