The Share&Charge Foundation, a nonprofit whose purpose is to “enable open innovation for a better electric vehicle charging experience,” has launched its Open Charging Network (OCN), a decentralized e-roaming product for EV charging across different networks. OCN, which uses the e-roaming standard Open Charge Point Interface (OCPI v2.2) protocol, will begin by serving the European market, including the UK, the Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland and Austria.

A key feature of the OCN is the OCN Registry, a smart contract deployed on the Energy Web Chain, a public, open-source blockchain platform. When an EV driver begins a charge session at a participating charge point, OCN checks the on-chain registry to route the e-roaming charge between the appropriate parties.

Christopher Burgahn, Product and Partner Management Lead at Share&Charge, said, “Our decentralized OCN solution can deliver e-roaming without the lock-in effects of the centralized intermediary approach, and it scales well, avoiding the hassle of setting up and managing ever more bilateral agreements.”

Source: Energy Web Foundation