This week Enel X Way North America, a subsidiary of Enel, announced it would cease operation of its EV charging business in North America, which includes support for its JuiceBox EV chargers. While the company says that the chargers installed in private homes will still function, they will no longer have any customer support and the associated mobile app will cease functioning, removing a key benefit of the charging platform for in-home users. Public, commercial JuiceBox chargers will cease functioning completely and become stranded assets unless host sites proactively take the step to migrate them to a different software provider.
While this decision may make business-sense for Enel, it creates a burden for owners of JuiceBox chargers. Recent years have seen similar instances around the world of EV charging manufacturers and operators going out of business or ceasing support for an existing product, which has in many cases led to stranded assets. This is due to the proprietary nature of the software in many EV chargers, meaning if the company that created that software stops maintaining it, there is even the possibility that the charger becomes a brick, which is what will likely happen to many of the JuiceBox commercial chargers.
With EV adoption continuing to accelerate and many potential EV owners experiencing anxiety over the lack of charging infrastructure, stranded assets are a worrying trend. LF Energy recently posted a blog written by member PIONIX, the original contributors of the LF Energy EVerest project, which explored how an open source approach to EV charging software can prevent stranded EV charging assets. This is because if the base code on a charger is open source, if the manufacturer or operator ceases operation, in the case of public chargers, a different operator could procure the assets and continue operating them. This is due to the nature of open source code, which is vendor-agnostic. And owners of private chargers can still update open source software running on their charger, or leverage vendors who offer such support.
The LF Energy EVerest project develops and maintains an open source software stack for EV charging stations. By digitally abstracting the complexity of multiple standards and use cases, EVerest runs on any device, from unmanaged AC home chargers to complex multi-EVSE satellite public DC charging stations with battery and solar support. As an open source, community-driven initiative, any charger manufacturer or operator can use the software as they see fit. This not only reduces their own R&D and maintenance costs, but lets them focus on building unique functionalities and selling points rather than writing code that is non-differentiated from their end users’ perspective. It also means the charger will work with any car, cloud network, and payment platform, which broadens their customer base and means the charging station operator can avoid being locked into any single technology vendor. And open source is sustainable long term, as it is not reliant on any one company or developer to maintain it. LF Energy posted another recent blog explaining how an open source governance structure ensures software is maintained over the long term.
LF Energy also hosts the CitrineOS project, which was originated by S44 Energy. CitrineOS is an open source charger network software for rapid OCPP 2.0.1 and NEVI compliant EV charge management. It can be used as a standalone solution, or users can build upon its capabilities to effortlessly provision and remotely control chargers, facilitate seamless transactions, monitor uptime, power levels, and degradation, and efficiently manage consumption and throughput. Again, this has huge benefits for the charger manufacturers, operators, and users, as it reduces R&D and maintenance costs, and ensures interoperability. Both EVerest and CitrineOS are part of the LF Energy EV Charging Special Interest Group (SIG), which serves as a focal point for the EV charging focus area within the technical work happening in LF Energy; more projects are expected to be launched under this umbrella in the future.
Open source is the best way to rapidly expand the world’s EV charging infrastructure in a way that is reliable, interoperable, and sustainable for the long term. If open source software like EVerest and CitrineOS become the industry standard for EV chargers, the world will not have to worry about stranded EV charging assets in the future.
