International Standard – “Road Vehicles – Vehicle to Grid Communication Interface”. ISO 15118 is a collection of international technical standards that define a high-level communication interface for charging purposes. This standard finds broad utilization in modern electric vehicles (EVs). Thus, eEVs as well as electric vehicle supply equipments (EVSEs) are required to conform the ISO 15118 standard.

In general, global acceptance of ISO 15118 not only enables all EVs and EVSEs to work interoperable, but it accelerates the development of charging technology drastically.

The charging process is automatically started or ended by connecting or disconnecting the charging cable, whereby the necessary contract information for authentication and billing of the charging electricity is exchanged. The act of entering a credit card, opening an app to scan a QR code, or finding that easy-to-lose RFID card is a thing of the past with this technology. For this, a corresponding charging certificate from an e-mobility provider must be stored in the vehicle (contract-based charging).

Vehicle-to-grid — integrating EVs into the grid. ISO 15118 enables the integration of EVs into the smart grid. A smart grid is an electrical grid that interconnects energy producers, consumers, and grid components like transformers by means of information and communication technology.

The latest publication ISO 15118-20 from beginning of 2022 contributes as 2nd generation network and application layer standards. In short, it renews the previous definitions mainly in the manners of additional functionality, security and connectivity interfaces.

ISO 15118 consists of several sub-documents, collectively defining a complete communication interface covering all procedural and technical layers.

ISO 15118 can be described as the enabler for smart charging measurements. In other words, ISO 15118’s continuous data exchange between EV and EVSE, paired with the possibility to dynamically influence the charging process, allows Smart Charging activies of all kinds.

• Vehicle manufacturers (OEM)
• Charging infrastructure manufacturers and charging point operators (CPO)
• E-mobility service providers (EMP)
• Roaming platform providers (ROP)
• flexibility marketers/service providers, and network operators.

CarMedialab offers productive and field-approved hardware and software solutions conforming the ISO 15118 standard. Developing not only our ISO 15118 software stack, but also our own EV/EVSE communication controller hardware, we can offer detailed knowledge to all aspects of high-level charging communication.

Open Charge Point Protocol

OCPP standard version 1.6 is the most widely used protocol in charging technology. Version 2.0.1 is a further development and is the latest version of the protocol.

More information can be found here: https://www.openchargealliance.org/protocols/ocpp-201/

Systems with communication interfaces which use the OCPP standard are considered OCPP compliant or OCPP conform. It means that different charging points can be linked to different central systems if they have all been developed to be OCPP compliant.

In order to verify how compatible they are with other systems, CarMedialab regularly takes part in “testivals” where all of our product’s functions are examined and validated to ensure they comply with standard application.