• New charge point regulations introduce 6 key changes for charge point operators
• The intent of these changes is to improve the consumer experience at the electric vehicle charge point and enable greater adoption of electric vehicles

The Public Charge Point Regulations 2023 - a full teardown

In a bid to enhance the electric vehicle (EV) charging experience, the UK government has passed new laws that promise to simplify and streamline the process for millions of EV drivers.

On November 2nd "The Public Charge Point Regulations 2023" were "made". These came into force on the 24th November 2023. “The Public Charge Point Regulations 2023” aim to improve the experience of EV drivers in the UK.

Paua has reviewed the drafts and key points several times. As a leading provider of access to public electric vehicle charge points via the Paua EV charge card we have reviewed these documents extensively. Here are the six key changes introduced to make EV charging more accessible and efficient (in chronological order of enforcement).

We have also gone deep into a couple of subtleties that may have been missed in our insights section below. Please note that the official guidance has not been published at the time of this blog being prepared. It is anticipated that this will be heavily informed by questions being asked by charge point operators. A number of which are outlined below.

Make sure to read on for the main thing that we expect charge point operators have missed and what we predict will happen next!

The six main changes:

1. Pricing transparency (Part 5, regulation 11) requires a total price to be clearly displayed in "pence per kilowatt hour" on the device of an application without a contract. Pricing does not increase once the charging of an electric vehicle has commenced. Interesting for networks with dual pricing. Required November 2023
2. Contactless payment (regulation 5) requires charge points of over 8kW to accept payment made at a contactless terminal without a pre-existing contract. Required November 2024
3. Data (regulation 10) requires holding (and public access without terms and conditions on use) to data on chargepoints based on Open Charge Point Interface (OCPI). Specifically it requires "Location", "EVSE" and "Connector" (8.3.1-8.3.3 of OCPI 2.2.1). 30 second updates ensure that asset utilisation can be easily calculated. Required November 2024
4. Helpline (regulation 9). A 24-7-365 helpline free of charge for users. Quarterly reporting on number of calls, type of call, length of time (in 10 minute intervals), resolutions. Reporting is required from 13 months (reporting on the prior quarter) so expect first reports March / April 2025.
5. Reliability (regulation 7) requires chare point operators using rapid charge points (50kW or more) to be reliable 99% of the time during a calendar year. EVSE status of available, charging or reserved are acceptable status for "working". Enforceable from November 2024 but realistically reporting only takes place one year in arrears so we won't know until a year later (see below). Regular reporting (regulation 8). This one requires reporting on reliability for a network of rapid charge points but appears to require the first report for the calendar year of 2025 in January 2026. This is quite a long way off but time flies when you are having fun!
6. Payment roaming (regulation 6) is required with at least one third party roaming provider. Enforceable from November 2025

Insights, subtelties and minutiae to be aware of

A charge point means “a device intended for charging a vehicle that is capable of being propelled by electric power” but this isn’t clear as to whether this is a similar or different definition to an EVSE. This has implications when civil penalties are being levied!

A public charge point “means a charge point which is intended for use primarily by members of the general public”. The refinements go onto suggest this is to include things like supermarket car park chargers, and hotels accessible to the public. However the regulations also appear to indicate (although not explicit) that this would exclude someone offering their office chargers in out of hours scenarios for public use (as it it is not primarily intended for public use). A charge point in a permanent residential bay on a public road is  not a public charger (can only be used by residents and their visitors).

And a “charge point operator” means the owner of a charge point or any person operating a charge point on behalf of the owner.

A public charge point does not include a charge point restricted "for the exclusive use by a vehicle produced by a specific manufacturer". What does this mean for Tesla? Likely full compliance required on newly opened sites.

Regulations 5 to 10 do not apply to a charge point operator that is a micro business (5 contactless, 6 payment roaming, 7 reliability, 8 regular reporting, 9 helpline, 10 data). A micro business has a two of; a turnover of £632k or less, £316k or less on the balance sheet, 10 employee's or less.

Powers of enforcement. Quite a bit of information presented in the schedules on enforcement actions. The first report on this will be in five years so November 2028. Whilst not stated it is believed that the Office for Product Safety and Standards will be the enforcing body.

Enforcement costs will be £10k per charger where reg 5 (contactless payment), 6 (payment roaming), 8 (reporting), 9 (helpline), 10 (open data), and 11 (price in p/kWh). As noted before this remains ambiguous with regard the definition of an EVSE v a charger (what is the “device”?).

The fee for failing to meet reliability standard as a network (reg 7) is £10k for the network. A failure to report (reg 8) carries the max penalty of £250k.

There is an allowance for a "reasonable excuse" at part 2 11.3 whre compliance is concerned creating some wriggle room.

Interestingly the guidance as written refers to a very specific variation of OCPI (i.e. 2.2.1). We have delivered over 25 chargepoint integrations here in the UK (one of the highest number if not the highest number) and we are yet to observe a network operator using this specific standard (most are on 2.1.1 or 2.2).

In the original draft of the regulations there was a clause that stated that any roaming partner (reg 6) should not be a connected party. This appears to have been removed from the regulations but is referenced in the associated guidance ("a person or organisation that is external to the charge point operator"). Again in the guidance there is a reference to ensuring that consumers access roaming and therefore a roaming partner myst have a consumer proposition to comply with this regulation.

A further note on the Guidance; there is a reccomendation to avoid closed loop networks where two charge point networks roam with one another but do not work with anyone else.

Reliability reporting

As one commentator highlighted the Government view on reliability could be better assessed as availability. Reporting under OCPI does not guarantee that a charger is reliable. However Government has identified that they will cross correlate reliability reports with helpline reports. Clearly a network with seemingly “good” OCPI reports but terrible call centre records is doing something wrong.

The OCPI requirements for reliability (reg 7) and for open data (reg 10) reporting are based on the following data points as provided in OCPI 2.2.1. Note that the definitions in OCPI 2.1.1 whilst not identical are close enough to avoid issues.

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How might gaming of this reporting occur?

It would be relatively straightforward for an operator to present a charger that is offline for any extended period of time as either “blocked” or “unknown”. Or the more creative could move it to “Planned” all avoiding the need to report it as not working.

If specific opening hours restrict access these are not included in the calculation (although nothing stops an operator from recording these hours as available).

There is a further subtlety that has been under considered by Government (we did brief them on this!). Some operators treat their charge points differently to others.

1. In order to improve consumer experience some operators will identify chargers as “Inoperative” when one of the two combined connectors on an EVSE is in use. This falsely leads the Government approach to reliability to indicate that there is a level of unreliability at this charger. However the recent guidance suggests that statuses are mirrored as per OCPI 2.2.1
2. Similarly some operators will suggest that one physical EVSE is represented as two linked digital EVSE’s. Again, this can be used to improve the digital experience of a driver. However, this also doubles the network size leading to unusual effects on data reporting.

A formula for this calculation can be found in the associated guidance documents.

Calculations are considered over a full 12 month period so a down month can be recovered in later months.

A little random one; these EVSE status updates must occur every 30 seconds (reg 10 (4)) so expect improved data frequency!

It remains unclear if the 99% standard is a higher standard of performance than may be expected of an individual petrol pump.

The pricing point

Regulations specify that the charge point owner (or the person operating the charge point on behalf of the owner) displays prices in pence per kilowatt hour (p/kWh).

This has to be on the charge point or a device which does not require a contract.

Presumably the device without a contract is a phone? Otherwise a nightmare emerges for operators who use chargepoints that don’t have screens (think of changing thousands of stickers!).

However, does this limit innovation on pricing chargepoints? A number of charge point operators now offer off peak tariffs including Chargy and Geniepoint.

At reg 11.2 it is noted that the price displayed must not increase once a vehicles charging has commenced. In discussion with one charge point operator it was indicated that the price that is shown on the charger will most likely end up being the highest price that the charger runs at. Therefore if a charge starts at a lower price (say in the early hours of the morning) but continues into a higher price period (mid-morning) then the price may rise as long as it is not higher than the one advertised on the charger.

We cannot see how an operator can continue to charge a fixed fee or a per minute fee to align to the above pricing logic. However, it does open up a question of how overstay penalties may be treated. An area for guidance we expect.

**Update** on reviewing the guidance there is an interesting clause added which does not appear to immediately align to the regulations. The statement is in the pricing section and states "It is up to the charge point operator as to how the equivalent price in p/kWh is displayed for bundled pricing. If there is a fixed cost, for example £5, the charge point operator may want to display the equivalent p/kWh by outlining the price for each hour of charging or by calculating the p/kWh from an average charging session length." This seems to fly in the face of the idea of a simple consumer experience as you need to get your calculator out to understand the consequences.

The guidance also clarifies overstay fees and makes it clear that these are excluded from this requirement. It states "does not need to include overstay fees as they are not part of the price for charging."

Open data - the missed regulatory point?

A key area that Paua feels charge point operators have missed despite Government assuring us that they had spoken to “the whole industry” is the sharing of data.

By November 24^th 2024 charge point operators “must ensure that reference data and availability data are made available to the public free of charge and in a machine readable format without any requirement to agree to terms and conditions regarding the use of that data” (reg 10 (5)).

Reference data is the location, connector, payment methods, the price (in p/kWh), and availability.

Specifically, “availability” data means that a chargepoint is “working” as defined by an EVSE object status of “available, charging or reserved”. What is not clear is if this means that the exact EVSE object status has to be reported or whether it is just a statement to show its “not broken.”

Should each chargers status be reported then there is a risk of operational data being exposed to competitors and in the case of listed businesses an implication on insider trading.

• Knowing when a charger is in use, how often, how many times a day and for how long enables analysis of leading charge point sites and therefore a strategy of building competitive assets to your competitors.
• If you also use the pricing data you can start to predict the income from that asset indication the potential to forecast revenue and inside trade on an asset.

We anticipate some fairly swift clarity around this point to confirm that there is NO NEED to present the “available, charging or reserved” status. Doing so could be a disaster for the industry!

**Update** the guidance documents do not go far enough in clarifying what data is made available to the public. The statement of interest is "Availability data means information about whether the charge point is working and is available to use in accordance with the requirements of regulation 7(2).". A charge point that is in use cannot be considered available as any reasonable EV driver will ask the question "can I get a charge?". If it is in use then it is not available to be used. Therefore the guidance remains ambiguous on what data CPO's must release to the public. We expect industry bodies to push for clarity on this point.

Is Paua included?

As a leading EV charge card provider with the largest aggregated network of chargepoints in the country we have been checking this for ourselves.

The definition is “ the owner of a charge point or any person operating a charge point on behalf of the owner”.

As we enable access to and payment for charging we are excluded.

Aggregators and e-mobility service providers (EMSP’s) are not included in the regulations but we have an important role in ensuring that we support charge point operators in meeting the standards. Further to this it will serve us well to align, at least in principle, to the ideas presented.

Opinion: Empowering Electric Vehicle Drivers - A Positive Shift in UK Charging Infrastructure

The recent legislative changes introduced by the UK government mark a pivotal moment in the journey towards a sustainable and user-friendly electric vehicle (EV) landscape. The emphasis on transparent pricing, reliable charging points, and open data reflects a commitment to addressing the practical concerns of EV drivers. These changes not only simplify the charging process but also foster an environment where consumers can make well-informed choices based on pricing and accessibility.

The introduction of 24/7 helplines adds an extra layer of support, acknowledging the evolving needs of EV users. This customer-centric approach aligns with the broader vision of making the UK one of the most convenient places to charge an electric vehicle.

As the EV landscape continues to evolve, these regulatory shifts position the UK at the forefront of sustainable mobility. The government's proactive stance in creating an inclusive and efficient charging infrastructure sets a commendable precedent for other nations embracing the electric revolution.

Some key resources

The actual Statutory Instrument https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2023/1168/introduction/made

The OCPI guidelines referenced https://evroaming.org/app/uploads/2021/11/OCPI-2.2.1.pdf

‍The linked Guidance documents for the Regulations https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-public-charge-point-regulations-2023-guidance

The Automated and Electric Vehicles Act 2018 https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2018/18/section/9