Customer Background
Our customer is a multi-billion-dollar company well-known for delivering smart production solutions for connection technology, electronics, and automation across diverse sectors including electric mobility, wind and solar energy, automotive, and many others. Headquartered in Germany, the company has a century-long history of delivering automation solutions worldwide, driven by its commitment for sustainability-focused innovations.
Customer Need
Our customer, renowned for their expertise in electric vehicle (EV) charging station technology, aimed to enter the competitive US market. They faced two critical hurdles. First, to meet US safety standards (UL 991 / UL 1998), they needed fail-safe and fault-tolerant software designs. Second, because most US backend management systems (CMS) already run on OCPP, their chargers had to be fully interoperable, capable of handling authentication, session control, metering, and status reporting without custom integration for each provider. To tackle both compliance and interoperability in one go, they turned to Softdel, relying on our past success and proven expertise in embedded systems, safety engineering, and OCPP integration.
Softdel’s Solution
- Safety & Certification
- Softdel assisted the customer in securing Underwriter Laboratories (UL) certifications, namely UL 991 and UL 1998, for their charging station (EVSE).
- We conducted an in-depth gap analysis to evaluate the existing safety standards’ status and subsequently created a comprehensive checklist of procedures to be observed for achieving compliance.
- The validation process involved an extensive audit, which encompassed tracing over 100 requirements, ensuring proper evidence within each design specification, and creating test cases for each requirement.
- Drawing on our expertise, we identified each hardware component and potential issues, addressing these gaps and providing software checks to mitigate failures. The project scope involved:
- Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA) preparation and execution
- Conducting risk analysis, performing static code analysis, and dynamic analysis
- Implementing code changes to address FMEA-induced failures
- Executing UL-1998 CPU tests
- Using appropriate modelling patterns and code generation options to ensure compliance with MISRA-C guidelines
- Embedded OCPP Stack Porting & Integration
- We embedded our OCPP 1.6 stack directly into the customer’s architecture, adapting it to run on a controller-based gateway platform within the charging station (ESVE).
- This integration enabled three business-critical, OCPP-powered capabilities:
- Charging Station Management: Secure user authorization and real-time session start/stop
- Device Management & Telemetry: Continuous health (Heartbeat) monitoring and live operational telemetry (StatusNotification, MeterValues)
- Billing/Reporting: Transmission of billing-relevant notifications or data (energy used, session duration)
- Secure WebSocket was implemented per the OCPP 1.6 specification (TLS + JSON over WebSocket). Where required, MQTT-based backend connectivity was incorporated as an extension.
- Additionally, Softdel generated documentation in alignment with the UL checklist guidelines - all message flows, error handling, fallback logic, and edge cases were captured for robustness in real-world usage, ensuring both compliance and interoperability were fully traceable within the certification framework.
Standards and Technology
Communication Protocol: CAN bus CAN bus, OCPP 1.6J
Testing: Static and Dynamic Analysis, Vector cast, PClint, MPLab analysis toolÂ
Programming Language: Embedded C & C++
Platform: Baremetal & RTOS based embedded system
CPU Tests: As per UL 1998 annexure A
Analysis Tools: VectorCAST, PC-lint, static/dynamic analyzers, MPLAB toolchain
Benefits
- 24% faster time to market: By embedding OCPP at the firmware level, Softdel eliminated the need for custom interfaces, third-party middleware, and after-the-fact retrofits, cutting delivery timelines by ~24%, clearing the path to faster product rollout.
- End-to-end solution: With an open-standards-based, fully owned charging ecosystem built on automation, remote monitoring, and reusable components, the customer now operates at lower cost, reducing total cost of ownership (TCO) by up to 40%.
- Accelerated UL certification: Softdel helped the customer expedite UL certification, bolstering their introduction into the US EV sector.
- Enhanced product reliability: Through FMEA, risk analysis, and code adjustments, Softdel notably improved the reliability and safety of the customer's embedded electronics and software, resulting in fewer safety issues for end-users.
