OCPI

OCPI is what makes a charging network usable by someone who is not its customer. Where OCPP connects a charger to its operator, OCPI connects operators to each other and to the apps drivers actually hold. It is stewarded by the EV Roaming Foundation.

• Modular - Locations, Tariffs, Sessions, CDRs, Tokens and Commands are separable, so a party can implement only the roles it plays.
• Role-aware - a Charge Point Operator and a Mobility Service Provider implement different halves, and the specification says which.
• Version negotiation built in - a /versions endpoint lets two implementations agree a revision, which is a governance feature most standards in this catalog lack entirely.
• Genuinely deployed - Chargefox operates as a CPO across 2.1.1, 2.2 and 2.2.1; Pod Point’s OCPI 2.2.1 surface was verified live during this research; char.gy publishes an open Locations and Tariffs feed with the version undeclared and no /versions endpoint, which is exactly the failure the negotiation mechanism exists to prevent.

Why it belongs in this catalog

OCPI is the clearest example in energy of a standard whose purpose is interoperability between competitors. Nobody mandated it; the charging industry adopted it because roaming is worthless without it, and a driver who cannot charge on a rival’s network is a driver who buys a different car.

That makes it a useful counterweight to the mandate findings elsewhere in this research. Australia’s Consumer Data Right produced a shared vocabulary by law; OCPI produced one because the commercial incentive was unavoidable. Both work. What does not work is a standard that is neither mandated nor commercially forced — which is where Green Button sits in the United States.

It is recorded here from provider evidence in the API Evangelist catalog rather than from a published report.