What actually breaks
A connected charger is not a standalone appliance. It holds a permanent connection to a central server — the CSMS — which decides whether a user is authorised, starts and stops sessions, records the kWh and triggers payment. When that server goes dark, the charger loses its brain.
Depending on how it was configured you get one of two outcomes: it becomes completely inoperable, or it falls back to a degraded mode where it charges anyone who plugs in, authorising nobody and billing nobody. The second is worse than it sounds if the unit sits in a public car park.
The one question that decides everything: can you change the URL?
OCPP is the standard protocol chargers and servers use to understand each
other. If your unit genuinely implements it, somewhere in its configuration
there is a field holding a wss://… address. That field is the
whole story:
- If you can edit it, your charger belongs to nobody. Point the URL at another CSMS, the unit connects, and it works again. No hardware change, no firmware change, nobody's permission required.
- If it is missing or locked, the manufacturer baked its own cloud into the firmware. There is nothing to be done without opening up the unit, and often the only route is replacing the communications board.
This is the real reason to distrust an "OCPP compatible" label on a brochure. Compatible can mean the manufacturer speaks OCPP to its own cloud, with no way for you to reach that setting. The test isn't what the catalogue claims — it is whether you, from the unit's own admin interface, can type in a different address.
How to check before you buy
- Ask for the configuration manual, not the sales brochure, and look for the OCPP settings section. If the manual doesn't document it, that's your answer.
- Check the Open Charge Alliance's list of certified equipment. A model appearing there has passed independent testing, rather than simply being claimed by its maker.
- Ask explicitly, in writing: "can I configure the OCPP server URL and credentials from the unit's interface, without involving the manufacturer?" That answer by email is worth more than any certificate.
- Confirm the unit supports OCPP 1.6J or 2.0.1. Anything older, on SOAP transport, is effectively dead.
What you recover and what you lose when migrating
- You recover full operational control: authorisation, remote start and stop, meter readings, payment and invoicing.
- You leave behind the session history living on the old platform, unless you can export it before it closes. If your provider has announced a shutdown and you still have access, export now.
- You have to rebuild RFID cards and user accounts. The physical cards themselves still work — their identifiers just need registering in the new system. You do not need to buy new cards.
Migrating to AskaCharge
Register the charger in the dashboard, copy the OCPP URL the platform gives you, paste it into the unit's configuration and wait for it to reconnect. From that point it shows up online with live status. We support OCPP 1.6J and 2.0.1 natively, so old and new equipment coexist in the same account.
And the same logic that lets you in lets you out: the URL is a standard OCPP endpoint. The day you want to move to another platform, you change that line and your charger goes with you. That is the only guarantee worth anything — the one that doesn't depend on us continuing to exist.
The lesson for anyone selling installations
If you are an installer, this has become a sales argument in its own right. Your customer has read the headlines about chargers left stranded, and is rightly nervous about investing several thousand euros in equipment whose working life depends on a foreign company not changing strategy.
Being able to tell them the hardware you install is standard, the software managing it is interchangeable, and that in the worst case one address gets changed and everything keeps running, is exactly the reassurance that whoever is selling them a closed ecosystem cannot offer.