SolarNetwork provides an OCPP 1.6J service that OCPP compliant chargers can be configured to communicate with. This OCPP integration provides the following features:

• Chargers are associated with SolarNode IDs, which must be owned by your SolarNetwork account. A SolarNode need not be physically deployed to work with OCPP; you can create a certificate-only SolarNode in SolarNetwork and use the ID for OCPP. Any number of chargers can be associated with a single SolarNode.
• The SolarUser OCPP API provides an API so you can manage the credentials and other settings required for chargers to connect to SolarNetwork.
• Charge session (transaction) data is translated into time-series datum streams, using the node ID associated with the charger and a source ID that you configure in your account-wide OCPP settings or charger-specific settings.

Two connection profiles are supported by SolarNetwork:

• HTTP Basic authentication
  • HTTP Basic authentication with HID
• URL path authentication
  • URL path authentication with HID

☝️ Note that HTTP Basic authentication is the preferred connection method.

To connect a charger to SolarNetwork using OCPP with HTTP Basic authentication, the following settings must be used:

This connection configuration matches the TLS with Basic Authentication Profile - 2 security profile as defined in section 2.4 of the OCPP 1.6 Security specification.

If a user settings hid value is available, the hid can be included in the URL in order to have user events generated for connection failures, which can be useful when troubleshooting charger connection problems.

If a charger is unable to use the HTTP Basic authentication connection method then the charger credentials can be provided in the URL itself, using the following settings:

The {username} and {password} parts of the URL must be replaced by the charger's actual username and password credentials. For example, if a charger's username is ch1 and password pass123 then the URL to use would be wss://in.solarnetwork.net/ocpp/j/v16u/ch1/pass123.

If a user settings hid value is available, the hid can be included in the URL in order to have user events generated for connection failures, which can be useful when troubleshooting charger connection problems.

🔥 Note the HTTP Basic authentication method is preferred, as URLs will be captured in SolarNetwork log files. The credentials are still encrypted in transit (between the charger and SolarNetwork). The URL path authentication method should only be used if a charger cannot support HTTP Basic authentication. Be sure to use unique credentials that are not shared with other services.

SolarNetwork turns OCPP meter readings associated with charging sessions (transactions) into datum streams. Each datum will contain the following properties:

In addition, the OCPP Measurand values reported by chargers are translated into datum properties and normalized into standard units, as outlined in the following table.

If the OCPP Measurand values reported by chargers include a Phase property, the datum property names will include a phase suffix according to this table:

Here are some examples:

SolarNetwork turns OCPP charger connector status updates into datum streams. Each datum will contain the following properties:

⚠️ NOTE: the source ID template will not be provided with location parameter for this datum stream. Any resulting empty path segments will be removed from the resolved source ID value. For example, given the default source ID template /ocpp/cp/{chargerIdentifier}/{connectorId}/{location}, a chargerIdentifier of CP001, and a connectorId of 1 the resolved source ID would be /ocpp/cp/CP001/1/status.

An example connector status datum looks like this:

{
  "nodeId":        1,
  "sourceId":      "/ocpp/cp/CP001/1/status",
  "created":       "2020-04-01T12:00:00.000Z",
  "status":        "Charging",
  "sessionId":     "17a8cc98-43fa-4233-ac1e-037f6667c163"
}