LF Energy has joined hands with the U.S. Joint Office of Energy and Transportation (Joint Office) to build an open source reference implementation for electric vehicle (EV) charging infrastructure. LF Energy’s EVerest project will develop and maintain an open source software stack for energy communications across charging stations, vehicles, generation resources, batteries, adjacent chargers, power grids, backend payment systems, user interfaces, and mobile devices. This will reduce instances of incompatibility that result from proprietary systems and make charging more reliable for EV drivers.

“The EVerest project has been demonstrated in pilots around the world to make EV charging far more reliable and reduces the friction and frustration EV drivers have experienced when a charger fails to work or is not continually maintained,” said LF Energy Executive Director Alex Thornton. “We look forward to partnering with the Joint Office to create a robust firmware stack that will stand the test of time, and be maintained by an active and growing global community to ensure the nation’s charging infrastructure meets the needs of a growing fleet of electric vehicles today and into the future.”

The collaborative development model offered by open source and the neutral governance structure provided by LF Energy will speed the adoption of EVs and decarbonization of transportation in the United States by:

• Accelerating development and deployment
• Increasing customizability for different use cases
• Offering long-term maintainability
• Avoiding vendor-lock in while enabling a commercial support ecosystem
• Ensuring high levels of security

The Joint Office will dedicate resources to improving the EVerest project, including coordination, community engagement, and software code. Dr. K. Shankari, who serves as principal software architect for the standards and reliability program at the Joint Office, has also been appointed to the EVerest Technical Steering Committee which sets the technical direction for the project.

This is a pioneering example of the federal government collaborating to deploying code into an open source project. With the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) Standards requiring that EV chargers conform to Open Charge Point Protocol (OCPP) 2.0.1 no later than February 28, 2024, it is urgent that charger manufacturers consider a standardized reference implementation that is OCPP 2.0.1 compatible such as EVerest.