The Power of Broker Architecture for CPOs: Part IV

And we are live. Welcome everybody. Take a seat, take a cup of coffee. We will start in 30 seconds. Maybe next time, I'll find some background music to entertain you. Well, you could show in the FlexiCharge advert. of EMS. I will mention that. I will mention that, again, at any time, you can drop your questions in the questions panel on the right side. It must be this side. I'm not sure with the mirror effect, or you can also just put them in the chat, and we'll pick them up as we go along, most probably after the presentations by the two stakeholders. So on that note, thank you very much again for joining and get ready for a good session. Robert, the floor is yours. Yes. Thanks, Chris. Yeah. Hello, everybody. Once again, masterclass once a month. Just a quick introduction. Chris said it. I'm Robert. So if you haven't joined the previous masterclasses, I'm the CTO of FlexiCharge, co-founder responsible at FlexiCharge for obviously our technology stack, our system architecture. Sorry, Robert. Sorry, Robert. Make sure that it looks like your screen is bouncing a little bit on your table. Maybe there's something a bit unstable. Yeah. No. Yeah. Okay. Sorry. I don't touch the table. Yeah. Yeah. And yeah. Today we are going to finalize sort of the first series of our masterclass around our connect solution. And actually we kept the highlight to the end. And today we are going to talk about integration of our load energy management solutions into charge point management systems. And I'm happy that Tom is joining me from from a Vesto. He will. He will get his time to introduce himself after after my presentation. Is it visible? No, that's not the one I wanted. Can you see it. Chris? Yes. We can see it. Okay, perfect. Yeah, just go ahead. Yeah, masterclass part for CPMS integration as i said quick recap on um the third master class um then i'm going to give a introduction a more sort of generic overview about our connect architecture so which includes the broker but the connect is not only the broker it is basically a holistic middleware for interconnection of assets um that sounds very abstract but it will get clear during the during the presentation what it actually is and then i will show the different options how we can integrate with cpms or how as a cpo you can you can integrate with third-party cpms but also um if you have your own cpms how you can can integrate our solution into it so in the previous um master classes it it was everything around broker architectures so future proof stack tech stack um especially around ocpp brokers and we know the classic architecture where we have the ev where it's connected to the evse so the charging station and then typically what we see is that the evse so the charging station is directly connected to the cpms and um after the cpms we have all the um e msp solutions clearing houses and so on and so forth but obviously we also have um more and more we see that in in certain markets now integration with um network or distribution system operators um and that is of course causing a challenge next to the fact that we see that many of our customers or many cpos like to integrate third-party solutions into their existing tech stacks or even into their existing charge point management systems so um what we see in the market is a trend towards these what you call ocpp broker architectures or general um broker architectures not specifically on the cpms or not specifically on the cpms protocol but also a general data broker which sits in between the charging station so your hardware in the field and the cpms on the other side and which gives you the the freedom to um well interconnect or the freedom to integrate third-party solutions like um the flexi charge load and energy management solutions so the is we are going to open up a bit this connect product and I just want to give you a bit of a context to it for us connect is is of course it can serve as an OCPP broker as we have discussed but for us or for Flexi charge it's a interconnect middleware and a data broker so basically it provides a holistic middleware for connection and intercommunication of assets and these assets can be obviously in pure charging infrastructures this is charging stations and what we mean by middleware or holistic middleware is that you can connect the charging stations not only by OCPP in which case you're going that OCPP data broker pass but you can also connect chargers in using different protocols like for example Modbus but then obviously in load energy management it's not it's not only about the chargers but it's also about other assets like for example stationary batteries it's about power meters measuring external uncontrollable load it's about solar systems which all need to be somehow integrated into the load energy management solution and what we have done that flexi charge is basically decouple so we we use connect as an abstraction layer to be able to interconnect different assets and abstract the information towards the overlaying optimize and aggregate products optimize is our load and energy management solution for yeah local optimization optimization local load management at the site level and aggregate is basically our VPP layer on top where we can aggregate local or sites into VPP and provide participation in or provide grid services for example flexibility participation in flexibility in flexibility markets so that's basically how it's so that's basically how it's structured and that's the the more abstract way of or yeah way of of describing our connect solution so what we're going to do now is to or what I'm going to do now is to describe how in particular if you have an existing technology stack with a CPMF a third party solution como beef it's basically you can add some development of or higher you have to integrate local energy assets like a building solar system battery or as I said, we see a lot of demand right now for grid operator distribution system operator integration and then obviously providing dynamic load management at the site level with a local controller. But obviously these solutions have to be integrated into your tech stack. And as I said, so the underlying interconnection architecture, you have to, so one of the challenges in this industry is not only sort of providing, how to say, standard solutions or to providing load energy management or provide functionality in the CPMS, but one of the key and major challenges is also the orchestration of different assets and the orchestration of different communication protocols being used because only one protocol we have a pseudo standard for right now, which is OCPP for the chargers. That's nice. That's a good approach, but there's no standard for power meters. There's no standard for batteries and for grid operators. It's even worse. If you think about that in Germany, you have 800 different grid operators, which have different requirements of how they want to interface to a local load management solution. So basically what this requires is, and that's what I also tried to explain earlier, an abstraction layer, a middleware, which can orchestrate and which can basically abstract all these different communication protocols towards. For example, load energy management solutions like the flex charge optimize that's our load management solution or flex charge aggregate, which is our VPP solution. So, but then you have now the the picture for the load and energy management, but they, it's, there's no integration into the technology stack yet, for example, into your CPMS or maybe third party solutions. And for that, we provide a flex charge SDK. We, we, we call it where you can easily integrate your CPMS either via OCPP. I will give an example for that in a second or other protocols. So where you can, you can integrate the load management through the harmony SDK into the CPMS. You can integrate third party solutions into the overall harmony platform, or you can provide a custom services, you can extract data and so on and so forth. So on one hand, connect serves as an middleware extraction layer. towards flex charge. Towards flex charge load energy management. And on the other side, it serves as a middleware abstraction layer towards CPMS systems, third party services. Like we discussed last time available or custom services, which you build your, which, which you build in house or your own data warehouses and so on and so forth. And there's different ways of how the integration can actually happen. So we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we're not going to dive into that now. So if we integrate a CPMS, there's different ways of how this can be done. And this is shown here. So typically. The charger is actually at the bottom, obviously, and it would connect to a CPMS directly by OCPP. One way is, um, that the CPMS provides state information. charge power information. Charge power information, which it receives from the charger via OCPP. Towards harmony connect. So to our connect solution. It's abstracted on top sits optimize or load energy management solution, which then provides. Um, set points back to the CPMS, which the CPMS is actually, um, extracting and sending to the charger. That's one way. That's one way. The other way is that. The charging station is not directly connected to the CPMS. So the line here on the left hand side would not be there. It's rather connected via OCPP to harmony connect. And we, or harmony connect forward the OCPP connection to the CPMS. So this is a pass here at the bottom. And this is what in the first. Um, one, two, three masterclasses. We are calling the OCP. Okay. So this is a, the, uh, three masterclasses. We're calling the CPP broker solution. Right. So that's the easiest solution to actually integrate. An existing C PMS because it means there's no custom integration into the C PMS with respect to harmony. Um, and there's no custom integration in harmony and flexi charge towards the C PMS. In some cases, it might make sense, but the easiest and simplest and quickest solution is basically to use this OCPP pass. So charger connected to the C P P pass. So charger connected to harmony via OCPP. And then forward the connection, the OCPP connection to the CPMS harmony is extracting all the information from the OCPP message flow and provides it to optimize our load energy management solution. Um, the third way is basically to integrate. Um, I call it loosely coupled. So that means the C P P pass. The charger is now controlled by Modbus. So connect harmony connects to the charging station via Modbus controls charge currents and abstracts that towards optimize. So the load energy management solution and the whole communication is happening completely independent of the C PMS also completely independent of the, um, of the C PMS. Obviously what is possible is to do. So it has a loose coupled integration into a loose coupled integration into the C PMS's where the C PMS is able. For example, extract real time information about the set points from the load management system about, uh, uh, uh, stators, about, um, example specific things so to change a maximum limit for a complete site or change the configuration i have via api or even through internal cloud-based communication channels and to all of this on the right hand side obviously we have all the info in interfaces to the to the assets we call them um the pv system power meter batteries and then finally also to the grid operator so this gives you the complete picture of how um you can you can all the options how you can integrate optimize into the cpms and uh yeah that's basically it and um i'm happy to hand over to um tom now um maybe you can give a quick introduction of yourself and then we are we are really curious to hear how if esto or which of these passes if esto has chosen to integrate the flexi charge load energy management solutions so over to you tom thank you robert thank you for the introduction um yeah i will start with a quick introduction about myself and i will share some slides to talk through the investo uh story so a bit about myself um i'm the also cto but then from investo a company that builds a uh saa solutions uh saa solutions a solution for a cpms system so recharge point management system um we started about five years ago i'm also one of the founders and i'm now on the lead of the technical team um so that's just in short about me um i will start sharing a presentation and talk a bit about what we do at uh investo uh let's see quick check do you see my screen yes i think so yeah okay so yeah as i said we started about five years ago um and we started building a charge point management system um what we do is we provide a uh the back office for your charger and um then you must think about uh things like uh create a system where you can see all your charges uh the status of course the status of your charges uh the sessions that are happening on your chargers and we are the platform that will uh can also integrate with uh ocpi so roaming connections um and i'll talk more about that later but um it's basically the the backbone of your uh of your chargers um what when we started we saw a lot of companies that are doing this as well of course that were already there uh which were um taking actually the full spectrum of everything that you can think about if you think about charges and we said well let's try to focus on what we're uh doing best and uh we are very good at building scalable architectures and we have a lot of experience in the um ospp side of the uh of the tv world and the roaming part uh so actually the basic cpms system so we um we said okay we're gonna focus on that and everything around that everything that will be um evolving in the future let's always think about what would be uh part of the cpms um and what is actually a totally different story uh like ems that is now of course uh very um actual and trending and uh let's not build that let's focus on the cpms um um we also try to uh uh also support all the industry standards of course so we always work with uh ospp in this case talking to the charges ocpi uh hubcheck try to follow these standards so we're uh always open for for integrations with other other parties um okay so um we are focusing as i said on on a scalable architecture that means that we focus on cost as well as cost efficient as possible but give you the uh the best uptime um that would be available in in in the world and that's uh because we have a lot of experience in in cloud architecture and um like these scalable software solutions um and then if i i hope that this works yeah okay so um i have another picture that will show more like how we how we integrate stuff like profit set side like uh how do we integrate with other parties um okay there's a bit of a delay i i see but that's fine um yeah so we are already have a global reach so we're all over the all over the world so one of the things as i said we should be scalable we should be multi-region so we deploy our services everywhere to have this this um this high uptime uh all over all over the world and um so i have some more slides so if we if we're gonna deep dive in in more like architecture or integration things i can show something else but this is the basic uh picture that we use to explain on um how do we integrate with uh parties like flexi charge or evatable or other parties and um as you can see uh it always starts in our end at with the charger and um like robert is telling about the broker architecture that we talked about uh uh uh uh the past sessions as well uh uh we have a component like that as well we call it the ospp tunnel but basically it's doing the same and it really depends on your um i think on the on the use case of your uh of your chargers if you would start with the flexi charge broker um or the investor ospp tunnel it doesn't really matter that much but please pick a software provider that supports these kind of integrations integrations and these kind of uh open data apis where you're always in control of your own of your own data so if we take a look at this picture then uh you would connect your charger um and the investor to know can be configured to for example forward all the all the data to uh flexi charge as well so it will end up in our system and will end up in uh in the flexi charge system um without all our um apis uh and webbooks and monitoring so we have we have a couple of points where you can integrate uh a third party solution um all this data can be combined by flexi charge uh but flexi just can also send commands back to our system and we will forward it to the charger and that's actually how we can um yeah have a full integration of other solutions that are not the core cpms um and but have this um uh these kind of these kind of integrations possible you also see that we do of course all the roaming protocols um that's not really into scope here in this talk i think but um of course we have those protocols as well and support these um yeah that's a very short uh intro i think about um about how we integrate the stuff and if uh so robert already mentioned like hey here's this sdk i already see some questions about um sdk it's a software development kit so it's a bit technical maybe but uh that's how we describe like uh how can you talk to us and how can you get information back from from a system that's basically an sdk so in this case we have the tunnel those pp tunnel that will use this sdk to get all the data from our system to uh a system of flexi charge so um yeah that's uh that's the the the first quick intro i think about about the testo and i know robert that's the uh robert that you uh had some questions uh prepared as well so let's continue with that yeah yeah yeah yeah so no worries about it being technical i mean what do you expect if two technical guys sit here and basically it's also the purpose of these master classes to really do technical deep dives i mean if you want to talk about the abstract things you got to talk to the sales guys i mean um so yeah the question is um first of all um i mean you you you we have a we have a nice partnership together with with the west do we have many customers together um cpos bigger cpos um also customers in the fleet um e-truck segment and um obviously in cpms systems we can talk about that in a second but um you see different trends about how to deal with load management but you actually i i remember when we started our collaboration like two three years ago um three years ago um you guys said okay we explicitly have made the decision that we are not gonna develop any load energy management solution ourselves so maybe you can give a bit of a background how how what what what drove that decision so why why did you make that decision of course for us it's nice and i completely agree you you need focus in in in your product but maybe a bit of a of a background on your on your decision yeah yeah yeah yeah of course um yeah i think i already mentioned it a bit but um yeah so i think in my view um you can be you can be the best in the world in one thing and if you try to do all of the things you will not be the best in the world um so if you look at these solutions um yes we can try to do other things as well but we won't be as good as the parties that have this 100 focus on this area um on this area and um it's a choice of course there are companies that do this as well um but i think it will be more cost efficient and better you will in the end get the better solution uh to pick the companies that are have this full focus on this one area um and that's of course ems but it's also i mean smart charging um but also support or um anything anything else actually that's not that we don't see as the core cpms uh we will not we will not touch it uh we will make the integrations possible so we have a full list of integrations that are like plug and play in our system like with flexi charge um but that's that's really what where we want to keep the focus and that also gives you the ability to to um be very cost efficient so always look at the look at the cost and see where you can uh uh uh the customer only pays for the for the cpms in our case or the cpms and the ems but not all the other things that are maybe in your system but you won't use uh so that also has to be paid on these companies and you will probably pay a bit about that as well even if you don't use it so it's a that's another um choice of course um but yeah that's how we see it at uh at the investor yeah yeah and that's actually also a clear uh software as a service in a classic from a classic perspective that's that's a that's a software as a service approach to yeah focus on your core competence and what you provide as a service but then be open and in that respect we have exactly the same policies or strategies to be open to integrate with specialists right and therefore you need to have what you call you have your you have your ocpp tunnel you have your api and in that respect our architectures are very very similar and they are very open yeah which also gives you a lot of future proof um in your in your technology stack because well you know how it goes in in in this dynamic market and you can you can nicely scale technology is enhancing every year and you can you can grow with your with your technology stack if you if you use open systems i think that's that's that's a very important aspect um so now we are seeing all these uh and this maybe gets goes a bit away from from now or a particular integration but now that i have a cpms guy here i'd like to to to hear your your your way of thinking about it or what you think about it because we see a lot of these i mean obviously yeah flexi charge we are specializing on on load management we are integrating with cpms you have other people like available and i think you have other people like available and i think you have other people like available and i think you have also integrated with available but there's a every week there's a new startup in the in the sas world for focusing on not only ev charging but also energy management and and operations so where do you see the role of the cpms in the future now that you know more and more specialized systems actually occur in in the landscape yeah that's a good question um i also see some questions in the uh from the audience so just a quick answer there yeah um i showed you a little picture even with uh webbooks as well so from our system indeed uh you can see the full life cycle of session so start update all these events are uh possible to to catch and to do something with it in integration um so yeah about these future trends yeah so i think five years ago about um that we started uh that we started uh ems was of course it was starting but it was not like uh everybody needs this yeah everybody get this consent like okay we probably should do something here because we will get issues with uh electricity or power grid supply etc but it was not like you need this 100 now uh but i think the last about three years and you probably have the better answer there but um yeah you see like okay this is gonna be a big thing um and it's still um i mean in in upcoming years this will be uh like a must have for most of the companies uh so ems will be will be a big thing um and there's still a lot to come there i think um yeah so as you yeah like you asked like what are you gonna focus on um yeah we we use this word commodity a lot in our company and i think it's always it sounds a bit boring like uh commodities but it's really it does fit our company because commodity is just um it's helping us to focus on the real job here as the cpms so we won't do all the fancy new stuff immediately so we we we we look at it and of course we try stuff as well but in the end um if we see okay but this will be a thing that everybody needs in the future um we will add it in the cpms um like for example uh dynamic pricing so five years ago that was not a thing um but now you see okay it's getting more traction people are really want to use it okay and then we started adding it uh because it's getting commodity for cpms and so that's how we look at it like okay what do we add in the cpms and what do we not not add in the cpms um so things we see and i saw a question about that as well uh like uh trucks i think or reservations that's something that came by yeah reservations yeah that's also uh uh upcoming so we already planned something for that so uh the the the protocols are not really ready for that um so the protocols do support reservations for example ocpp but it's it's not there yet um but it is it is a catching on so there will be new versions probably and we will maybe add some uh more integrations that are possible for uh for reservations robert wants to yeah yeah yeah yeah exactly because with the reservations it's an interesting topic and we we now hear that um more and more and and and i think there's two types of reservations which we have to distinguish here one is a time slot reservation to you know so nobody so you can get to your charger charger yeah yeah and nobody is occupying it so you're sure when you arrive you you get a charge charge a connector and you can plug in and the second aspect in it is the power uh reservation so that the system if you i mean it's it's irrelevant for systems where you have enough grid connection doesn't matter you don't need to to to to to reserve power or energy it is actually at the end of the day so there's a time aspect in it but then if you have systems where you have like we call it equality factor so if the installed physical power of the charging station is higher than the grid connection then that time slot reservation needs to go together with the power reservation so that means the system is lowering at that particular point in time the specific amount of energy and is not giving that uh to other charges yeah um or is prioritizing that particular uh charging session where you have a reservation because it was reserved and everybody else gets something um what is left over and for that what we can provide with with with our solution is like dynamic prioritization of the dispatching so of the allocated power if you have five EVs charging currently and then there's six evs charging currently and then there's six ones coming which has a reserved time slot um that can be prioritized so that will get maximum power or the power it actually reserved and everything everybody else which didn't reserve will get whatever is left over so it's important to understand these these aspects um with respect to to to to of course our topic load management yeah no that's a good very good point robert and i think this is actually um showing um showing like okay how would this work in in the uh differentiation between a cpms and um and an ems right so because we as a cpms we have to provide uh also a part of the reservations but that's more like a part okay we have to communicate to everybody that between these slots it will be reserved for someone yeah yeah so but we will not do all these load management things of course because that's not cpms yeah so we are in charge of the charger uh we are responsible for uh we are responsible for uh getting the data right so also uh state statuses of the charger etc so that's where we uh come in and that's what would be part of the cpms um but yeah sending the profiles uh taking care of all the grid connection limitations etc etc that's not the cpms that will be an ems flexi yeah yeah but but but just to say it there you see how how strong cpms and ems lms have to have to cooperate cooperate in or collaborate in in in in that respect and therefore it's so important to have these these different uh the interfaces i think there's a question follow up on that uh could you could cpo emsp sell a premium offering process charging in that case yes the answer is yes i mean we from from our perspective maybe tom you can say something later later later to that um we have uh what we call dynamic prioritization so at any point in time any charging session can be prioritized now either by internal sort of thresholds we have different ways of doing it first come first served we have uh whatever lowest state of charge first uh based on departure time and so on and so forth so that that's that's internal 18Gera test and um because of course but yeah Carla pre Obama is around different interface how you can change the prioritization in real time during a charging session. I think, Robert, it may be good to mention here. So you hear a lot of people talking about reservations and these kind of prioritized things. But I think you should really start with the EV driver experience, right? So we saw a lot of people that just started like, okay, we add reservations, but there was nothing on the charge point or that actually showed you like, hey, this thing is reserved. So you can drive here, you can try to plug it in, but it won't work because someone else reserved it. So you really have to start thinking about first about the EV driver and EV driving experience and then start looking at like, okay, how do we add reservations on top of this? And for truck, of course, truck is different. Truck charges are often behind gates. So you're more in control on who actually enters the area, etc. But if you talk about public or public charging or semi-public, you should really start with the story with the EV driver and then look at like, okay, how can reservations actually add value here? Yeah, so that's sometimes you think the other way around, like, okay, we want to reserve because, but really start with thinking about EV driver experience. Yeah, but there you have, I completely agree. And that takes the third party in, which is the actual hardware installed. So if you have a reservation, maybe set a charge point to unavailable, so nobody else is going there. But the one which reserved it still goes there because he knows it's reserved for him. But I think there are, yeah, yeah, it's, you have obviously to take your hardware into account as well, or your hardware supply. Yeah, yeah, definitely. Yeah, I saw, I saw maybe a robot. I saw one other question. Yeah, but dynamic pricing. Yeah. So we use and so a, that's a, that's a European company that provides all the 50 minutes and hourly rates of charging. And that's what we use as the, as the base for pricing. And you can, of course, add things on top if you want to, or you don't want to go lower as a price and stuff like that. That's how we, how you can configure the tariff on our end. Yeah. And then there was a question. If as a Flexi charge tech team, you're always prioritized when, when you charge. Yes. Yes. So we, we have full control. We can, we can do that in real time, but obviously more important, our customers. So we give them priority. Yeah. Are there any more questions, Christoph? Otherwise, I think we are. We are getting to an end in terms of time. Not sure if Christoph is still there. He is there because I saw that he just ended the chat. So he is somewhere, but he's on mute. Maybe. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Let's see. Time slot reservation. We picked up on it. There's one question. Why are you using CPMS? CSMS. It's the same. Yeah. I never heard CSMS. Yeah. Good question. Now that it's, it's the same. So it's the back office of the, of the charger. And there's a lot of abbreviations used here. Especially using the letters C and S and M. Yeah. Yeah. But it's the same. Yeah. So if there are any more questions, it's time now. Yeah. Yeah. I'm back. I don't know. There was a technical glitch as always. No, I was just trying to, yeah. Let's then wrap up. I hope we answered the questions. And I think we painted a great picture of how, again, we allow CPOs to integrate door engine management into their tech stack. It was great to see also, yeah. How Ivesto, you do it with your super interesting CPMS with this unique architecture, with this very stringent focus on key features. Really interesting to see how this will evolve. You know, I think, again, as you mentioned, there are CPMS, which are trying to do everything like monster suites. And yeah, how do you, how do you, you know, who's going to take the best share out of it? With this extremely competition that it was increasing every day, as you mentioned, Robert, there are new services popping up with teams dedicated to a vertical. So that was really interesting. And yes, there is no conflict between CPMS and our connect approach, as Robert demonstrated. I hope it was a good wrap up for this last session. One, two, three, four. We'll send up some follow ups. You'll get access to the recording and we'll follow up with a recap of all four. And yes, can we give a sneak peek of what's the future, Robert, in terms of master classes? Yeah, of course. We, I mean, it, it, it, it sounds like you're, I mean, you're making the impression we, we are not continuing the master class. Of course we, we only started. Yeah. We, we are going to continue and we are going to focus now in the next, we'll see two, three, four master classes on load energy management. So on our optimize a solution and the architecture behind it and really deep dive of, of how the system works, what you can do with it. And then, yeah, that, that will cover sort of two, three, four master class. We talk about static load management, dynamic load management, building integration. We talk about specific use cases for e-truck charging, for logistics, for charging hubs and so on and so forth. So really deep dive how the system is actually working and yeah, but that's more towards the summer will obviously at some point also get to the VPP part. which I'm looking very much forward to. So see you in the next master class on load energy management on optimize. Yeah. Thank you very much, Tom again for joining. Yeah. Thank you, Robert and wishing everybody a great day. Thank you. Bye bye. Bye bye. Bye bye. Bye bye. Bye bye. Bye bye. Bye bye. Bye bye.