Regular readers may recall that in 2021 the British Standards Institution published the first edition of their Publicly Available Specification 1878 on the subject of “Energy smart appliances”? You may also recall that I wrote at the time:

A “smart” EV charging station is a special case of an interoperable Energy Smart Appliance.

The BSI has recently published a draft version of a new edition of the PAS 1878 specification, and is inviting comments from interested parties. Note that the deadline for submitting any such comments is July 9th 2025.

The BSI’s request for comments points out that:

This PAS specifies the following aspects of a system for the delivery of certain demand side response (DSR) services for domestic and small business premises…

This PAS is intended to be used by manufacturers of ESAs and CEMs.

NOTE 1 – Other audiences that might have an interest in this PAS are maintainers of ESAs, manufacturers and maintainers of interfacing products, software developers and service providers.

The introduction to the new draft includes the following information:

This is a full revision of the document, and introduces the following principal changes:

• defined system architecture for both on-premises and hybrid cloud/on-premises implementations of ESAs and CEMs, and both 1-to-1 and 1-to-many CEM to ESA connections;
• minimum requirements for secure communication between CEMs, ESAs and DSRSPs;
• detailed sequence of DSR-based activities from consumer registration to decommissioning;
• a move from OpenADR 2.0b to OpenADR 3.0 as the minimum application layer protocol to be supported by Interface A (between DSRSP-CEM);
• the optional provision of flexibility performance requests from the DSRSP to enable ESAs to calculate relevant flexibility offers more easily;
• updated compatibility with GB smart metering and a wide range of smart appliances – including EV charge points and battery storage;
• new provisions for Open ADR 3 as the Interface A

By way of a brief introduction to some of the assorted acronyms mentioned above, here is figure 1 from the draft PAS:

Clause 8 of the draft PAS includes these specific requirements regarding electric vehicle charging:

The smart EV chargepoint ESA shall be capable of reporting forecast power profiles based on operating capabilities, consumer preferences, including expected departure/arrival schedule and journey distance/ duration/characteristics, and external information, including estimates of EV battery capacity, EV state of charge (or state of charge if available via the charger – e.g. V2G, or accessible via the vehicle telematics) and EV physical operating limits. If a smart EV chargepoint supports V2G functionality and has been configured to present itself to the DSRSP as an ESA, it shall meet the information and messaging requirements specified in Clause 5 and Clause 6.

NOTE Smart EV chargepoints are not required to support V2G functionality.

Clause 5 is entitled “Communications and messaging” and includes this diagram:

Clause 6 is entitled “Cyber security” and includes this diagram:

If you have any questions please do not hesitate to ask using the space provided for that purpose below.