Montvale-based S44 recently announced an open source project — CitrineOS — aimed at accelerating the buildout of nationwide electric vehicle charging infrastructure.
S44, a leader in EV charging software, said the project will deliver critical back-end software required to ensure EV charge management compliance with Open Charge Point Protocol 2.0.1 and National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure standards.
The company said the software is based on real-world EV charging use cases and the need to improve reliability, enabling widespread interoperability between charging equipment, vehicles and networks.
President Joe Biden’s administration aims to have 500,000 public EV chargers and for half of new vehicle sales to be electric by 2030. But unreliable and inconsistent charging experiences have consumers putting their foot on the brakes.
Biden’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law has invested $7.5 billion in EV charging, and the Charging and Fueling Infrastructure discretionary grant program offers an additional $2.5 billion. To qualify for this funding, EV charge management software must be OCPP 2.0.1 compliant by Feb. 28, 2024.
“Even with an experienced team, you’re looking at six to eight months to build NEVI-compliant EV charge management software from scratch,” Julian Offermann, co-founder and CEO of S44, said. “With CitrineOS, you can do it in a month. Democratizing access to the software is the only way to be fast enough to hit the state and federal certification deadlines.”
Everyone from enthusiasts to the largest global charge point operators, fleet managers and car manufacturers can use CitrineOS to:
- Provision new charging equipment;
- Complete charging transactions;
- Remotely control charging equipment;
- Monitor charger equipment uptime, power levels and degradation; and
- Manage energy consumption and throughput.
“Reliable, standardized and open back-end communication is key for commercial, fleet, public and autonomous electric vehicle charging infrastructure,” Cliff Fietzek, board member of CharIN North America, said. “CitrineOS is a game-changer for this communication, built natively on the latest charge point protocol standard, OCPP 2.0.1. Now anyone can leverage the open source libraries to get to work quickly — to bring even legacy networks to OCPP 2.0.1 compliance.”
CitrineOS enables industrywide collaboration on a single code base. The ability to build and apply fixes for broad use will make back-end communication more reliable across the board.
