Evaluation of OCPP and IEC 61850 for smart charging electric vehicles

Interoperability of charging infrastructures is a key success factor for E-Mobility. Standards like ISO/IEC 15118 and IEC 61851-1 are developed to ensure base level interoperability of front-end communication and signaling processes for smart charging between electric vehicles and charge spots. With the Open Charge Point Protocol (OCPP) a forum of European industry members also moves towards a common back-end protocol for charge spots intending to reduce and secure overall investment costs. However, in the current form OCPP lacks means for enabling grid services based on smart charging. In this paper the authors provide a review of today's state of the art in ISO/IEC standardization of the V2G Interface and furthermore detail how OCPP could leverage existing standardization efforts for grid automation from IEC 61850 in order to overcome its shortcomings.