Introduction

Overview

OCPP (Open Charge Point Protocol) is the standard that lets a charging station (EVSE) communicate with a central system (CSMS). Easee’s Cloud OCPP implementation is based on OCPP 1.6 2nd Ed from the Open Charge Alliance. All dates and timestamps in the OCPP layer use UTC and follow the ISO 8601 standard.

Why OCPP

OCPP gives you a standard way to connect chargers and management software from different vendors. This makes it easier to scale your network, avoid vendor lock-in, and keep your setup flexible over time.

• Interoperability: Use chargers and central systems that speak the same protocol.
• Flexibility: Change hardware or software providers without rebuilding your setup.
• Operational control: Support remote actions, authentication, load management, and session monitoring.

Key roles

The terms below often appear together, but they describe different parts of the charging ecosystem.

• CPO (charge point operator): Operates and maintains charging infrastructure.
• CPMS (Charge Point Management System): The system that chargers connect to in order to monitor, send commands and manage the network through OCPP.
• EMSP (e-mobility service provider): Provides driver-facing services such as payments, billing, and station discovery.
• Operator in Easee: In the Easee Portal, the operator shown in the dropdown is the provider operating the chargers.

One company can take on more than one role. For example, a business can act as both a CPO and an EMSP.

OCPP integration with Easee

If you build EV charging stations or central management systems and want to control chargers through OCPP, start here: Ready to integrate

If you want more detail about setup and management flows, continue with the use case guides.