Chargencode

Chargencode is a term used to describe a modular encoding scheme intended for the secure and efficient transmission of charging-related data within electric vehicle charging ecosystems. It refers to a family of lightweight, binary-encoded frames designed to carry information such as session identifiers, energy delivered in kilowatt-hours, pricing, merchant metadata, vehicle and station identifiers, and status messages. Chargencode frames are designed to be hardware- and transport-agnostic, enabling use over Ethernet, Wi‑Fi, cellular, or short-range radio links.

Technically, each Chargencode frame begins with a synchronization marker, followed by a variable-length payload and a checksum or cyclic redundancy check. The payload is organized into optional fields using a compact tag-length-value encoding scheme. Variants of Chargencode provide different data sets and optional privacy features. A small forward-error-correcting code can be applied to improve reliability on lossy links, supporting robust operation in variable network conditions.

Security and privacy considerations are addressed through optional end-to-end encryption and message authentication. Typical implementations may employ AES-based encryption and HMAC-based integrity checks. Key management strategies often rely on secure hardware elements within the vehicle or charging station, with provisioning coordinated by a back-end system. Interoperability depends on mutual support of the Chargencode profile, and there is no universal standard that guarantees full compatibility across all vendors and networks.

Applications of Chargencode include real-time billing, session auditing, remote control of charging sessions, and energy-tracking dashboards. Adoption remains limited and tends to be confined to specific vendor ecosystems or pilot programs rather than serving as a universal global standard.

See also: Electric vehicle charging, Internet of Things, MQTT, AES encryption, HMAC.