Gridware has a whitelist of manufacturer/device combinations which are known to work safely with Gridware.
Each month we add new devices. We test those for compatibility with the Open Charge Protocol (OCPP) and with their compatibility with Gridware.
Almost always we find minor deviations. Frequently we can correct those by using adapters and an anti-corruption layer. Often we also send error-descriptions to the manufacturer. In best case scenario those errors can be fixed with a firmware update on the hardware.
Classical problems are:
Compatibility only with a specific OCPP-version.
- Not all “feature profiles” of OCPP are supported. The device will still be counted as being compatible, but not all features can be used.
- Difficulties with Smart Charging / Smart Grid functionality. “Smart Charging” refers to charging that is actively controlled by Gridware, mostly during a charging process, but also outside of it. The reason for this is that this is used less often in practice than performing standard charging.
- Problems with character encoding and data areas (“overflow”)
- …
This may sound worse than it is: Known problems can be proactively addressed by the manufacturer. Our experience with this was 100% positive. Almost everybody is backing the OCPP-standard, and almost everybody aims for full compatibility. One reason for this is that nearly none of the manufacturers have their own Chargepoint Management System (CPMS), so they depend of a other software.
