With the continuous progress of the new energy industry in technology and industrialization, new energy vehicles are slowly becoming popular, but the imperfect, non-standardized and non-uniform standards of charging facilities are restricting the development of the new energy vehicle industry. In this context, OCPP (Open Charge Protocol) was born, which aims to solve the interconnection between charging piles and charging management systems.

The technical editorial committee of OCPP (Open Charge Point Protocol) is OCA (Open Charge Alliance), which is located in the Netherlands. The consortium is sponsored by ElaadNL, a Dutch company that has been operating more than 3,000 charging stations in the Netherlands since 2009.

The Open Charging Protocol (OCPP) is a global open communication standard that addresses the difficulties of communication between private charging networks and supports seamless communication management between charging stations and each provider's central management system. For many years, the closed nature of private charging networks has caused much frustration to a large number of EV owners and property managers, prompting widespread calls for an open model across the industry.

The first version of the protocol was OCPP 1.5, and in 2017 OCPP was already in use at more than 40,000 charging facilities in 49 countries, so in essence it has become the industry standard for charging facility network communications. The OCA has now followed up the 1.5 standard with OCPP 1.6 and OCPP 2.0.

Here's what each of 1.5, 1.6, and 2.0 has to offer.

What is OCPP 1.5, released in 2013?

OCPP 1.5 communicates with the central system via the SOAP protocol based on HTTP protocol to operate charging points

It supports the following features:Local and remotely initiated transactions, including billing metering
Metering values independent of the transaction
Authorization of charging sessions
Cached authorization ids and local authorization list management for faster and offline authorization
Intermediary (non-transactional)
Status reporting, including periodic heartbeats
Booking (direct)
Firmware management
Provide a charging point
Report diagnostic information
Set charge point availability (operational/inactive)
Remotely unlock the connector
Remote reset

What is OCPP1.6 released in 2015
Features of OCPP1.6
Supports JSON format data based on websockets protocol to reduce data traffic (JSON, JavaScript object representation, is a lightweight data exchange format) and allows operation on networks that do not support charging point packet routing (e.g. public internets).
Smart charging: load balancing, central smart charging and local smart charging.
Allow charge points to resend their own information (based on the current charge point information), such as the last metered value or the status of the charge point.
Extended configuration options for offline operation and authorization

What new features have been added to OCPP 2.0, released in 2017, compared to OCPP 1.6?

Device Management: a feature for obtaining and setting configurations and monitoring charging stations. This is a long-awaited feature, especially welcomed by charging station operators managing complex multi-vendor (DC fast) charging stations.
Improved transaction processing: Especially welcomed by charging station operators who manage a large number of charging stations and transactions.
Increased security: Adds secure firmware updates, secure logging and event notifications, and secure profiles for authentication (key management for client certificates) and secure communication (TLS).
Add smart charging capabilities: for topologies with energy management systems (EMS), local controllers, and topologies for integrated smart charging, charging stations and charging station management systems for EVs.
Support for ISO 15118: for plug-and-play and smart charging requirements for electric vehicles.
Display and information support: on-display information for EV drivers, such as tariffs and rates