Let’s look at offline chargers, how to avoid them and bring them back online.
Do you recall those commercials asking parents ‘do you know where your children are’? A lot of us remember being children without mobile phones who didn’t have to check in until dinner time. We wouldn’t dream of doing this with our own children now. Something similar has happened in this industry with expensive equipment being installed and essentially abandoned. In the past charging infrastructure was installed in areas with no or poor GSM signal and just forgotten about. These chargers are an annoyance to EV drivers and an awkward subject for the ChargePoint owners.
As a ChargePoint operator Park & Recharge know how vital it is that chargers are online and controllable. Not only because of the new smart charging and public charging regulations but also for providing remote customer support. However too often, how a charger will communicate is an afterthought. A GSM survey is never carried out and a simple ‘my phone works down here’ is the only measure taken. The lack of signal is treated as some unavoidable obstacle for which no one can take responsibility. While this can on occasion be the case, all too often a charger is written off before comms strategies are tested. This is why we offer communication network surveys for installers and maintainers. This can happen both before and after installation. After the survey is completed a full GSM and 4G report will be created for the site and the best network solution designed. We also supply installers with comms booster kits with fail safe measures in place.


Park & Recharge works with most EV chargers and we understand their communication strengths and weaknesses. There aren’t many scenarios we haven’t encountered but if you are in the unfortunate situation that your charger needs to be installed in a black spot then we can also recommend ChargePoint configuration settings and service changes to help keep your silent charger operational.