Overview: The Trend of Community Charging for Electric Vehicles
Electric vehicles have emerged as a promising aspect of the automotive industry. To encourage wider adoption, it is important to prioritize the charging needs of individual users. While relying solely on public charging stations is not practical, community charging should be given priority in future charging station designs, with public charging as a secondary option.
EV Power operates the largest number of community charging stations in China and is the earliest and largest independent destination charging network operator. It innovatively utilizes the idle time of parked vehicles for charging, avoiding the need for users to search for public charging stations. This approach caters to the charging requirements of users without fixed parking spaces or the ability to install charging stations.
Challenges of Community Charging Station Construction
The construction and operation of community charging stations face certain challenges:
- Low cooperation from property management, low grid power supply, and other human factors.
- Heterogenous equipment that is extremely scattered in different areas.
- Harsh construction environments, poor network, and difficulties in maintenance.
- Complex configurations at the backend application layer, requiring a unified data management channel and decoupling of devices and applications.
Solution: A Cloud-Edge Collaborative Charging Operation Platform
In 2016, EV Power began applying edge computing and IoT technology to construct and operate new energy charging stations. They chose to deploy the EMQX MQTT platform, developed based on Erlang/OTP, in a private cloud environment. This was integrated with their in-house developed VPN charging network, forming a distinctive cloud-edge integrated charging network operational platform.
Overcoming Weak/Disconnected Network Challenges
On the device side, EV Power has achieved application in weak network environments and unattended and remote operation through their self-developed edge gateway and BLE on-site computing solution.
Efficient Distribution of Multi-Application Data through Rule Engine
At the access layer and platform side, the Timescale data integration provided by EMQX Enterprise is utilized for time-series data storage and analysis. The EMQX Rule Engine and Data Integration seamlessly integrate data into the backend proprietary microservices operation system, expanding the platform into precision and large-scale AI applications. This streamlines the deployment of community charging applications.
OCPP Support
The Open Charge Point Protocol (OCPP) is the de facto industry standard for communication between a Charging Station and a Charging Station Management System (CSMS). It is designed to accommodate any charging technique, such as ISO 15118. Major CPOs worldwide have widely adopted OCPP.
However, OCPP takes WebSocket as the default transport protocol, which demolishes the scalability and robustness of communication. EMQ implements the OCPP gateway by mirroring OCPP data flow to MQTT topics, which enables lightweight and asynchronous communication efficiently across constrained networks to remote systems.
In EV Power’s projects in Southeast Asia, EMQX supports the standard OCPP 1.6 protocol, helping EV Power quickly meet the adaptation of charging station access protocol standards in the Southeast Asian market.
Achievements
With the assistance of the EMQX MQTT platform, EV Power's charging stations network has enhanced operational capabilities across various scenarios. They have gradually improved their surrounding network effects, achieving the highest theoretical concurrency of 30,000 transactions per second, with a total of up to 30 million transactions per day. This includes data such as network status, real-time charging logs, site power conditions, and user usage records. The data is promptly stored and analyzed in real-time.
EMQX has demonstrated high stability and cost-effectiveness. In the same hardware and price range, EMQX's service capabilities are unparalleled, allowing the company to save a significant amount on infrastructure expenses.
Leveraging EMQX's robust data access and processing capabilities, EV Power is building a cloud platform that seamlessly integrates charging networks, vehicle networks, and the internet, aiming to significantly improve charging station efficiency.