Section 1: What is UEI and why is it better than OCPI?
The Government of India has set a policy goal of achieving 30% market share for Electric Vehicles by 2030, which would require about 2.9 million public charging points, up from the current count of 16,000. While Government of India’s efforts to subsidize the cost of setting up chargers have been successful in kick starting charging network installations so far. Interoperability between various EV charging networks can help improve the discoverability of chargers, thereby improving user experience for EV adopters and charger utilization for charge point operators (CPOs). Consequently, there is an urgent need to ensure interoperability among charging networks, allowing EV users to access chargers via any Unified Payments Interface (UPI) or marketplace app of user’s choice.
Here is where Unified Energy Interface (UEI) network comes into the picture. UEI network, built on the Beckn protocol, facilitates the interoperability of charging networks for easier charger discovery and streamlined payments between users and charge point operators. It provides an indigenous, homegrown alternative based on successful Indian models like UPI compared to standards like OCPI.
UEI is based on the open sourced and made in India beckn protocol, the same protocol that drives Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC) and does 12 Mn orders from 150K sellers across 805 districts in India. Union Minister of Commerce and Industry, Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution and Textiles, Shri Piyush Goyal said that ONDC was created to democratize the existing ecommerce ecosystem of the country. UEI is built on a proven protocol that enables population scale interoperability.
Section 2: Differences between UEI versus OCPI
UEI is Vendor Neutral
Charging networks do not need to share their utilization with each other periodically, while as in OCPI they need to. This is the biggest friction today in getting networks to connect with each other.
UEI does NOT require Charging Networks to advertise their real time status with partners periodically.
However, OCPI requires parties to share their real time status of all their chargers periodically with each other.
UEI has Built-In Protocol Support for Reconciliation and Disputes
Once payment of charging sessions are enabled across networks, there will be ongoing issues related to payment reconciliation and disputes. This is also one of the reasons not all networks allow for payments to be enabled
Since UEI is built using Beckn protocol, it has an existing standardized dispute resolution and payment reconciliation process setup with ONDC. UEI network is adopting the same.
OCPI related payment reconciliation and disputes are settled manually today at the end of month between networks. This is a tedious process and often long drawn, hindering wide spread enablement of payments across all charging networks.
UEI is a Universal Implementation for Grids, Chargers and Consumers
EV charging sessions are facilitated through a combination of multiple protocols that interact with the grid (via OpenADR), interact with the charger (via OCPP), and interact with a partner network charging app (via OCPI). Each entity needs to invest multiple times the effort to make a charging session seamless
UEI is a universal purpose- agnostic protocol for energy transactions irrespective of the entity that’s involved in the transaction. For example: Beckn will not only enable EV-charging as a transaction, but also will create the possibility for the same asset (EV) to interact for flexible demand response, grid services, cloud energy storage or many such use-cases. The UEI Alliance is already working with three discoms to enable their grids and chargers to be UEI ready.
OCPI is a purpose-specific protocol; a charging network will need to implement other protocols like OpenADR if they want their chargers to speak to the grid.
UEI is recommended by Department of Science and Technology and now endorsed by Ministry of Power
DST under the request of Niti Aayog conducted a year long feedback session and group discussions with several charging network players, discoms, and EV OEMs. DST reached a unanimous conclusion that UEI is the recommended protocol for EV charging interoperability
The latest E Mobility White Paper from DST authored by Dr Anita Gupta recommends UEI as the interoperability protocol for EV charging networks
[Page 69 - DST Whitepaper]
The latest EV charging guidelines by Ministry of Power has advocated for UEI alongside existing interoperability protocol.
[Page 10 - MoP EV charging guidelines]
Section 3: Path Forward
Pulse Energy is going to take the lead by enabling it’s aggregated network of chargers* on the UEI network, any CPO or any marketplace app can connect to UEI and access and pay for charging at those chargers over UEI without having any prior roaming agreement with Pulse Energy. Sign up here for the waitlist.
And we are not stopping there, we want to unlock energy democratization at scale. We will be launching more energy systems on UEI soon, stay tuned.
If a CPO wishes to participate in UEI, Pulse Energy can help plug and play into the UEI ecosystem in less than 30 mins
If an OEM or EV fleet operator wishes to access UEI enabled chargers, Pulse Energy can help plug and access the UEI ecosystem in less than 5 mins.
We invite all CPOs to the UEI Alliance, It’s a non profit that’s been setup to help take feedback on UEI and keep the underlying protocol updated from time to time. You can visit https://ueialliance.org to apply for the membership.
*The chargers that will be enabled over UEI are the chargers that Pulse Energy has direct roaming agreements with.
