In 2022 & 2023, I was working as a Full Stack Engineer working on EVUp Charge, leading the development of the project from September of 2022. The largest of the projects listed, EVUp Charge is a comprehensive, scalable software that aims to facilitate charging facilities for the electric vehicle boom. With clients all around Australia, it offers reliable monitoring, monetisation, load balancing and sharing of OCPP electric vehicle charging stations around the country.

The software started as a simple website built in React, then evolved into a microservice architecture managed by Google Cloud Platform (GCP), with a GraphQL backend as well as microservices for charging, payments and load management. Later came an app built with React Native.

While I cannot share any further details of the codebase, I can explain the extensive functionality of the software for both drivers and charger owners. I'm sure those who are technically familiar with the tools listed in the previous paragraph can infer the vague details of how it fits together, and I will soon provide a seperate article on how to architect big scalable software applications like this, if that's what you came here looking for. With that in mind, these are the solutions offered by the software.

Disclaimer: Excuse the poor image quality, I assure they look slicker when actually visited!

Drivers of electric vehicles can readily access the app or website and will land on a map containing all of the locations which use the EVUp software (online locations) as well as locations that are known to have chargers but are not connected to our software (offline locations) - similar to PlugShare, for those familiar. This can be seen at the EVUp ChargeMap page. Similarly for the app, the ChargeMap is simply accessed at the landing page.

Note: For the rest of the driver section, I'll be using the app interface for reference. The functionality of EVUp for drivers is exactly the same on the app as it is on the website, except that currently on the website charging is prepaid and on the app charging is postpaid. While not my decision, this is because prepaid charging is quicker and likely to be less confusing for one time users on the web app.

Moving on, from the ChargeMap one can navigate to a nearby location and view the chargers at that location. For locations using our software, one can see the status of a charger (whether it is charging, finishing, preparing, available etc..). They can also see pricing details for charging and parking as well as useful information about the device itself such as it's Plug Type, Charging Rate and Model. For offline locations, we simply include the device details. To infer this missing data, integration of charging locations and their details from 3rd party sites is a major feature planned for 2023. An exciting upcoming feature, as it will result in a boom in locations and therefore usability of the software for drivers.

If a charger is currently being used, any user can also see live details about the session in progress, such as kWh consumed, the type of session in progress, and the live charging rate of the device. For mobile users who started the session, they can monitor their session easily from a drawer which will fix itself on the ChargeMap page.

These sessions also have robust underlying measures to ensure drivers get the best service possible, in particular smart disconnection handling (among other internal optimisations). Have you ever experienced the sheer panic of trying to cancel a Lime scooter or Uber when your internet drops out? You're often forced to concede that you might waste a significant amount of money that night.

Well with EVUp, when a device disconnects from our servers (which currently seems to be a significant bottleneck of OCPP technology) all payments dynamically stop applying, and pick up where you left off if a reconnection occurs. If not, the sessions will always end 30 mins after the disconnection, ensuring you never get charged more than what you receive. In contrast, it also supports the application of Idle Fees, which start applying once our servers register a vehicle is full.

Drivers also have access to a menu which contains their Session History, Card Details, Profile Information and a link to the EVUp support page. These are only pertinent to the mobile app. The web app does have a modal, except with limited functionality - the web app for drivers is mostly intended for one time users who wish to scan the charger QR code and prepay. This intends to save the frustrating hastle we've all found ourselves in of spending 15 minutes setting up account details etc, only to use the software for 5 or 10 minutes.

EVUp for Charger Owners enables owners of any electric vehicle charger (compatible with OCPP 1.6-J) to easily connect to EVUp and create their own charging station. They can monitor as well as monetise and balance devices they connect with - priming their chargers to be usable by the public. All they have to do is create an admin account at this link. This side of the software requires payment, whereby each charging station incurs $49.99 per month or $495 per year subscriptions. Once you create your admin account, you'll see the EVUp Admin Dashboard - which is only available on web.

From here you can navigate to Locations and create and upload metadata to as many locations as you purchased. After that, you can connect your charger to our servers by navigating to Devices and going through the enrolment process. In this process you point your device to a specified websocket url, then match it with a device preset made by EVUp (visible in Presets). After adding it to your location, you've successfully setup your EVUp charging station.

In order to utilise our paidcharging service, navigating to Tariffs will enable you to create tariffs you can apply to your devices back at the Devices page. We also include some neat graphics about the charging sessions that have occurred under your tenancy, under Paidcharging, which uses the data from the Sessions page. Most of what else is included in these pages is fairly self-explanatory, or are purchasable extensions on top of the software (like DLB). While I won't show all the pages here, I can showcase the paidcharging dashboard for reference.

EVUp is currently in version 2.0.0 and still growing everyday. Planned additions coming soon include:

• The addition of all globally registered charging locations, by integrating with 3rd party services like Plugshare
• A My Vehicles page in the menu, where you can add your vehicle and the software will infer what charger type you need, then direct you to the nearest available port of that type
• RFID support for drivers
• Integration of the Tesla API, enabling interaction between your charging session in EVUp and your car in the Tesla app

These changes intend to come together to offer a conclusive and comprehensive app that, in amalgamation with the factilies offered by EVUp for Charger Owners (Admin Portal), intend to provide an all-in-one package of features for electric vehicle charging.