Interpreting station statuses

Station statuses are a very important part of managing any charging network. They let you know when your device is doing fine - but more importantly when it needs some attention.

The first thing to understand about statuses is that they are divided into two different kinds:

• Administrative statuses, which are defined by the person administrating the stations - you
• Operating statuses, which are communicated by the station itself to our system

Administrative status

Definitions

Our system supports 4 different general administrative statuses and 3 different accessibility statuses.

General administrative statuses:

• In service: The element is in service and can be used for charging
• In deployment: The element is currently being deployed. It is for example new or in replacement of existing elements. It will be in service "soon"
• In maintenance: The element is currently being maintained. It will be in service "soon"
• Out-of-service: The element is out-of-service. It might be functional but is defined as not currently usable

Administrative statuses can currently be applied separately to pools and charging points. 

A 5th status exists, "Deleted" but you won't see it represented as such in our system. In the case of charging points, it has been replaced by the archiving functionality. In the case of pools, we don't support it at all - empty pools get destroyed when they are deleted and cannot be retrieved.

Accessibility statuses:

• Public access, free: The pool has no parking fee or other fee except the possible charging fee.
• Public access, payment required: The pool has parking fee or other fee in addition to the possible charging fee.
• Restricted access: To reach the pool, the EV driver needs to have access to the place where the pool is located. The access is restricted so not everyone can access the pool. 

Accessibility statuses can be set under Stations tab. Regardless of the accessibility status, the pool is visible for every EV driver using the mobile app. (If you want to prevent users to see the pool and hide it in the app, login to the Virta Hub, find the right pool, go Edit pool and tap Hide pool slider). Accessibility statuses has only informational value for the end user and they don't affect general administrative statuses.

To understand how hidden location and private location work, see this page.

Usage

Administrative statuses are for now more of a functionality you can use as is most convenient for your operations. For example you might want to group all stations currently in your storage under the "In deployment" status, or your broken stations under "In maintenance". 

It is important to note that all charging points with the following statuses: In deployment, In maintenance & Out-of-service are automatically disabled and cannot be used by your EV drivers. They can be still shown in the map, so if you want to hide them, please use the Hide pool -option.

We will keep this article updated as more functionality related to statuses is added.

Operative status

Definitions

As all stations with the statuses In deployment, In maintenance & Out-of-service are automatically disabled, cutting off all charger communication, the operative statuses only start being relevant if your charging point is In service. 

The flow how a charger changes its statuses when changing from free to charging and back can be differ within chargers. Usually the flow goes like this: available > preparing > charging > finishing > available. Some stations also change from preparing to charging status and from charging to finishing status so that they show a couple of seconds the status as Suspended by EV in between, and it is normal.

There are 14 different operative statuses used in the Virta Hub:

• Available (The charging point is working and free to use.)
• Preparing (The charging point is reserved. It is preparing to start charging so it is plugged in to EV and cannot be used the moment. The status will change as charging once charging has started.)
• Charging (The charging point is charging and cannot be used by another EV at that time. If stations firmware is being updated, the operative status shows as charging.)
• Finishing (The charging point is reserved. It is finishing charging so it is plugged in to EV and cannot be used at the moment. The status will change as free once the cable has unplugged.)

• Suspended by EVSE (The charging point is reserved by an EV (charger plugged in) and charging has been paused for a reason that is caused by charging point. Might also be caused because of communication failure with the vehicle which might be caused by a communication protocol issue, which is not setting charger to faulted state but Suspended by EVSE state.)

• Suspended by EV (The charging point is reserved by an EV (charger plugged in) and charging has been paused for a reason that is caused by the EV. Some stations also change from preparing to charging status and from charging to finishing status so that they show a couple of seconds the status as Suspended by EV in between, and it is normal.)
• Faulted (The charging point is faulted for some reason, logs might reveal the cause of error.)
• Offline (Connection between the charging point and backend is not working and it cannot be used.)
• Disabled (Connection between the charging point and backend is not working and it cannot be used, or admin has set the charging point out-of-service.)
• No status (No operative status reported by charging point yet)
• Unknown (Unrecognised status reported by charging point)

• Reserved (A old and rare status for stations using OCPP 1.5 protocol. Means an EV driver has reserved the station beforehand so in practise the charging point is occupied and cannot be used by another EV at that time. Virta Hub doesn't offer a possibility to reserve a station.)
• Occupied (A old and rare status for stations using OCPP 1.5 protocol. Means the charging point is occupied and cannot be used by another EV at that time.)

If charging is suspended both by the EV and the EVSE, status Suspended by EVSE has precedence over status Suspended by EV.

Note that more specific information about the different statuses supported by your devices can be found in the manufacturer's documentation. Small differences exist in the way chargers interpret them.

Because of their nature, the operative statuses do not exist at pool-level.

Usage

Operative statuses are key in understanding how your devices are doing and if some actions are needed from you. They tell you if a charger is online, if no errors have occured, if drivers are charging successfully... it is good to understand when each of the specific chargers you own are experiencing issues, so as to troubleshoot them better.

You can also set up alerts for yourself, to get notified whenever your stations switch to an error status (Offline, Faulted, Unavailable).

Read more on How to set up alerts.

UI example

In the picture below, we can see 4 statuses

• The ones circled in black are the administrative statuses of the pool (In deployment) and the selected charging point (In service). The second one is shown twice - one as information, and one in the edit menu.
• The one circled in blue is the operative status of the selected charging point (Offline).

Example of accessibility statuses: