UK Smart Charging regulations

The UK imposes additional requirements that may apply to your product if it is sold in the UK:

https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2021/1467/contents/made

There are several key requirements in this regulation such as:

  • measuring system and historic logs for 12 months

  • off-peak charging (schedules) pre-set defaults security

  • no default passwords

  • no hard coded credentials

  • encrypted communication (TLS …)

  • checks for updates

  • secure boot

  • check / detect unauthorized software change

  • tamper protection

  • security log (you can use the OCPP security log from BaseCamp)

  • randomized delays

Charger deployment can also impact the requirements. For example, randomized delays are disabled when a charger is operating under Demand Side Response service.

Most of the requirements are not in the BaseCamp domain and will need to be implemented by the hardware or non-BaseCamp software.

Regarding BaseCamp integration, “Part 2 11 Randomized delays” is particularly important. EVerest has support for that feature by enabling the following config option in the EvseManager module:

uk_smartcharging_random_delay_enable: true

By setting the config option, EVerest will be compliant with the regulations by adding a randomized delay of up to ten minutes on any change of current flow (both increasing and decreasing current).

The delay may be adjusted by the following config option:

uk_smartcharging_random_delay_max_duration: 600

While it is compliant, it is quite annoying to use. The regulation basically states that a random delay needs to be added if the underlying reason for the power change is not sufficiently randomized already.

As an example, think about a price signal that is the same for the whole UK. At 5pm, all EVs will stop charging precisely at the same time because the prices per kwh increases a lot.

Similarly, if prices drop significantly, all EVs connected will suddenly start charging.

This is a change in power that definitely shall be randomized to spread over ten minutes.

Another example would be that the power is driven by the excess energy from the solar inverter. A small cloud reduces the availability power and the EV stops charging. As this is a quite local event, it is already random on a bigger scale. The same applies to users plugging in and out.

EVerest does not know about the nature of the power change, if it is requested from an external entity (e.g. through OCPP, or a local energy management system) and hence always applies the delay, even if unnecessary.

To improve user experience, EVerest supports the uk_random_delay API. It offers three commands: enable, disable and cancel.

Enable and disable can be used to switch the feature on/off completely during runtime (e.g. due to user choice).

“Cancel” command can be used to cancel a currently ongoing delay. It has no effect on the next delay. This should be used to cancel any delay if the external source of the change knows that it is sufficiently randomized already.