Complex EV charging market: Validating transactions matters

Electric cars charging on a street

Sprawling across dozens of legal jurisdictions, multiple currencies, and even the low-key complications of time zones: Europe’s nascent EV charging market is complicated.

The highly complex and fragmented European markets are constantly navigating rapidly changing technology and legal requirements to make the economics work. These efforts have resulted in a wildly variable infrastructure with mixed quality and conditions. Meanwhile, there is a massive effort underway to provide interoperable payment solutions to electric vehicle (EV) drivers.

Roaming: Two sides of the same coin

In a roaming transaction, there is an especially lengthy process for a transaction to be turned into a line item on a driver’s invoice. Considering the challenges mentioned earlier faced by both charge point operators (CPOs) and e-mobility service providers (EMSPs), there has never been a higher need for reliable billing engines with robust validation systems for both entities.

How does that work? A driver uses a charging card or app offered by a service provider to start and pay for sessions on charge points owned by a third-party operator. Two transactions are happening here:

  1. A wholesale transaction between the CPO and the EMSP, and
  2. A retail transaction between the EMSP and the driver.

These transactions require validation, or checks, from two different systems. These separate systems create a transaction, calculate the correct price, and validate the same before the invoice is sent to the EV driver.

'There has never been a higher need for reliable billing engines with robust validation systems for CPOs and EMSPs.'

Transaction 1: CPOs to go first

Firstly, the transaction requires validation from the CPO on:

  • Feasibility: Are all values related to dates, duration, energy, and power feasible?
  • Configuration: Are all elements, such as parties involved, agreements, and billing rules, aligned to calculate the final price correctly?
  • Cost: If everything looks correct, is the final cost appropriate?

These checks may appear obvious at first glance, but a deeper analysis would show that a lot can go wrong with such transaction data, like:

  • The charge point is a time machine: The charge point clock isn’t functioning the way it should. The transaction start date reports the year 1970 or 2037, or something totally nonsensical.
  • The charge point is powering the entire neighbourhood: The charge point is reporting its Wh consumption as kWh and a one-hour session has a volume of 8000 kWh.
  • The charge point is floating on the Pacific: The location of the charging point is undeniably a bit strange.
  • The charge point has a negative attitude: It is reporting a negative energy volume (without V2G capability), or a negative duration.

These are just a few examples of how data inputs or interpretation can go wrong, but there can be other unpredictable concerns. With appropriate validation checks, CPOs are satisfied that the transaction is correct and then forward it to the EMSP.

Transaction 2: Time for EMSPs

The second step is for EMSPs to do their own validations. In general, these checks are the same as those of CPOs with a few additional ones:

  • Was there a roaming agreement in place between CPO and EMSP when the charge session was authorised?
  • Was a valid charge card used for the charging session (not expired, had balance, etc.)?
  • Did the CPO bill me fairly? Large deviations from the contractually agreed wholesale pricing can be flagged and disputed with the CPO.

A valid reason to validate

With more EVs on the roads, there are ultimately more drivers and, thus, more transactions occur. Unclear or faulty invoices may lead to a lack of trust and transparency between the driver and the service provider.

To help CPOs and EMSPs, the GreenFlux transaction validation system performs over 200 checks designed around a deep analysis of millions of historical transactions.

The solution serves CPOs, EMSPs, and companies in both roles. With this system, users can:

  • Review flagged transactions.
  • Receive advice on what action to take to resolve possible transaction issues.
  • Decide whether to:

a) Accept the issue as is.

b) Fix it and retry the calculation. Or,

c) Drop the transaction out of the invoicing cycle.

What does that mean?

Some of the benefits of our platform include:

  • Our platform takes automated action to resolve an issue, which helps CPOs identify common problems or unreliable charge points.
  • For scalable management, the user interface allows filtering and bulk actions.
  • CPOs and EMSPs can operationalise transactions with the historical data present in the system.
  • Lastly, the checks reduce the financial risk of unpaid invoices by partner EMSPs or drivers.

Would you like to know more? Contact us or continue reading below.

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