01Blog
Notes from people who run chargers for a living
Operations, economics, protocols and policy. Most of it would be useful even if you never became a customer — that is deliberate.
Introducing zevOS Copilot: ask your network a question
A conversational layer over your own operational data — availability, sessions, revenue and faults — that answers with the records behind the answer.
OCPP 1.6 vs 2.0.1: what actually changes for an operator
The migration is real but rarely urgent. What 2.0.1 gives you, what it costs, and how to run a mixed fleet without splitting your operations in two.
What "99% uptime" actually means for an EV charger
Most charging networks quote an uptime number that nobody can reproduce. Here is what the number should measure, why connectivity is the wrong proxy, and how to calculate something a landlord will accept.
Archive
Everything else
The unit economics of a public charger in India
What a DC fast charger actually earns, what it actually costs, and the three variables that decide whether a site pays back in three years or never.
5 Aug 2026 · 4 min
The van is the cost: cutting truck rolls on a charging network
A field visit costs more than most operators admit. A triage discipline built on remote diagnostics can close half of them from a desk — here is the sequence that works.
29 Jul 2026 · 3 min
Pricing an EV charging network: beyond ₹/kWh
Per-unit pricing is where every operator starts and where most of them stop. Idle fees, time-of-day windows and audience pricing are worth more than the headline rate.
22 Jul 2026 · 3 min
How your DisCom prices the electricity a charger consumes
Most states have a dedicated EV charging tariff category, and the differences between them decide whether a site works. What to read, and in what order.
16 Jul 2026 · 2 min
Building an OCPP gateway that survives ten thousand chargers
Every charger is a long-lived stateful WebSocket. The architecture decisions that determine whether your platform holds at scale — and the three that we would make differently in hindsight.
15 Jul 2026 · 3 min
Driver wallets, split refunds and RFID settings are now live
Prepaid balances, partial refunds that split correctly across wallet and gateway, and per-driver charging limits — the driver-side release.
9 Jul 2026 · 1 min
The commissioning checklist we wish every installer used
Most charging faults are born on commissioning day. Twenty-three checks — electrical, network, protocol and commercial — that prevent a year of support tickets.
8 Jul 2026 · 3 min
Site selection: the scorecard that beats intuition
Utilisation is decided before the charger is bought. Eleven weighted criteria for evaluating a charging site, and the three that override everything else.
30 Jun 2026 · 3 min
Partner portal and automated settlements are now generally available
Site partners get their own scoped login, and settlement runs now produce per-partner statements with session-level backing.
24 Jun 2026 · 1 min
Why charging sessions fail — a taxonomy
Failed sessions are the clearest signal of network health and the least examined. Eight failure classes, how to tell them apart in the data, and which ones are actually your fault.
17 Jun 2026 · 3 min
Smart charging, explained without the marketing
Load management is how you fit eight connectors behind a sanction that supports three. Here is what the protocol actually does, and where it stops working.
10 Jun 2026 · 2 min
Revenue sharing with site partners without losing the plot
Site partnerships fail on ambiguity, not on percentages. What the contract must specify, what to measure, and why the statement matters more than the split.
3 Jun 2026 · 3 min
Selling charging is not selling electricity — and why that distinction exists
Indian policy treats public charging as a service rather than as distribution of electricity. That single classification is what makes private charging networks possible.
2 Jun 2026 · 2 min
Decoding charger fault codes when every vendor means something different
OCPP 1.6 gives you nine error codes and a free-text vendor field. Making that useful across a mixed fleet is a mapping exercise nobody warns you about.
27 May 2026 · 2 min
OCPI roaming, explained for people who have to sign the contract
What roaming actually connects, what each module does, and the commercial questions that decide whether a roaming partnership is worth having.
20 May 2026 · 2 min
The idle fee nobody should ever pay
An idle fee is a parking instrument, not a revenue line. Getting the grace period, the rate and the disclosure right is the difference between freed bays and angry drivers.
13 May 2026 · 2 min
OCPI 2.2.1 roaming is live for CPO and eMSP roles
Publish your network to roaming partners, accept their drivers’ tokens, and let your own drivers charge on networks you do not own.
6 May 2026 · 1 min
The Indian EV charging rulebook: standards, tariffs and subsidies
Connector standards, electricity tariff treatment, the guidelines that govern public charging, and where state policy actually differs. A working operator’s orientation.
28 Apr 2026 · 3 min
Tariffs, rebuilt: one price list, many audiences
Time-of-day windows, idle fees, per-group rates and a snapshot on every session so a tariff change can never restate an old invoice.
21 Apr 2026 · 1 min
Firmware across a mixed fleet: roll out by cohort, never by unit
Firmware fixes faults and creates them. The discipline that separates a controlled upgrade from a network-wide outage is cohorts, baselines and a way back.
15 Apr 2026 · 2 min
When to add the second charger
Adding capacity too early kills the economics of the first unit. Too late and you train drivers to go elsewhere. Three signals that resolve it.
7 Apr 2026 · 2 min
ISO 15118 and plug-and-charge: what it takes, and whether you need it yet
Plug in, walk away, get billed. The experience is excellent and the prerequisites are substantial. Where the line currently sits for Indian operators.
1 Apr 2026 · 2 min
Per-EVSE charging profiles: fit more connectors behind the same sanction
Set a power or current ceiling per EVSE, enforced on the charger and re-applied automatically after every boot.
18 Mar 2026 · 1 min
Reading a state EV policy without wasting three weeks
Every state has one, most run to sixty pages, and roughly four pages of each are relevant to a charge point operator. Which four.
4 Mar 2026 · 2 min
What a lender actually asks a charging operator
Charging assets are financeable, but not on the pitch deck. The four questions that decide the term sheet, and the records you need to answer them.
24 Feb 2026 · 2 min
Station groups: staff who see only what they run
Granular access control for operators with regional teams, franchise partners or contractors — view, operate and manage as separate permissions.
18 Feb 2026 · 1 min
Monsoon, heat and dust: seasonal charging operations in India
Indian sites face three seasonal stresses that European hardware specifications barely anticipate. Each has a known signature and a cheap countermeasure.
11 Feb 2026 · 2 min
Why a charging platform should be event-driven
The OCPP connection is real-time and fragile; billing is not. Putting an event log between them is the architectural decision that makes everything downstream tractable.
4 Feb 2026 · 2 min
How to read a public charging tender before deciding to bid
DisCom and municipal tenders bring volume and reporting obligations in equal measure. The clauses that decide whether the contract is worth winning.
27 Jan 2026 · 2 min
Fleet contracts versus public charging: two businesses, one network
Fleet revenue is predictable and lower margin. Public revenue is the opposite. Most operators need both, and the mistake is running them the same way.
13 Jan 2026 · 2 min
Meter values: the numbers your invoices are made of
Every billing dispute resolves to what the meter said and when. What to sample, what to store and the rounding rule that prevents drift.
16 Dec 2025 · 2 min
What to stock, and where: spares for a charging network
The parts that fail are not the parts vendors sell as spares. What ten sites need on hand, and why it belongs at the depot rather than the warehouse.
9 Dec 2025 · 2 min
Which standards a charger has to meet, and how to verify it
A vendor claiming compliance is not the same as a vendor holding a certificate. What to ask for at the purchase order stage.
25 Nov 2025 · 2 min
A failed session costs more than the session
Put a number on the sessions that do not complete, and it changes what you are willing to spend on reliability.
18 Nov 2025 · 2 min
The API and webhooks are now public
Everything the console does, the API does — because the console is a client of it. Plus signed webhooks for session, station and settlement events.
4 Nov 2025 · 1 min
The seven things to try before booking a van
A fixed triage ladder, run in the same order every time, resolves most charger faults without anyone leaving the office — and makes the ones that do need a visit far cheaper.
21 Oct 2025 · 2 min
Multi-tenancy in a charging platform, and where isolation actually fails
Every serious charging platform serves several operators. The boundary between them has to be enforced in one place, not remembered in every query.
7 Oct 2025 · 2 min
Promotions on a charging network, without training drivers to wait
Free charging launches get you traffic that leaves the day it ends. Four promotional structures that build a habit instead of a discount expectation.
23 Sep 2025 · 2 min
Buying power directly: open access and green tariffs for charging
At a certain consumption, buying electricity from a generator instead of the DisCom becomes viable. The thresholds, the charges that erode the saving, and when it is worth the effort.
16 Sep 2025 · 2 min
zevOS is generally available
The charge point management platform we have been running with early operators is open to everyone. What it does today, and what it deliberately does not.
2 Sep 2025 · 1 min
Answering "your charger took my money" in ninety seconds
Charging support is a evidence problem, not a sympathy problem. What a session record needs to carry so that the person answering can actually answer.
19 Aug 2025 · 2 min
The charger is fine. The SIM is not.
A large share of "charger offline" incidents are connectivity, not hardware. What to specify, what to monitor and why the cheapest data plan is rarely cheapest.
5 Aug 2025 · 2 min
What a mall actually wants from a charging partner
Site owners are not evaluating your charger. They are evaluating risk, footfall and whether you will still be answering the phone in three years.
15 Jul 2025 · 2 min
National charging schemes, read from a small operator’s desk
Central support for charging infrastructure exists and is mostly designed around large deployments. What a ten-site operator can realistically access.
24 Jun 2025 · 2 min
Cable theft, vandalism and the bays that get blocked
The three physical risks to an unattended charger, what each costs, and the countermeasures that are worth the money.
17 Jun 2025 · 2 min
Franchise and territory models in charging, and when they break
Expanding through local partners gets you sites faster than capital does. It also fragments the driver experience unless the boundaries are drawn carefully.
6 May 2025 · 2 min
When a spreadsheet stops working: running a charging NOC
Somewhere between fifty and two hundred connectors, informal operations stops scaling. What replaces it, and in what order.
22 Apr 2025 · 2 min
One email a month, for people who run chargers
Operations notes, unit economics and policy changes that affect your tariff. No product announcements dressed up as insight.