OCPP Connecting + Status SuspendedEVSE

KingSt42Power · 31 January 2025 10:40

I’ve been using ChargeHQ to successfully control my Wallbox Pulsar Plus for several months. Tonight ChargeHQ seems to have lost its connection, which (apparently) meant the charger started charging at full rate right in the middle of my demand window, even though it was in a blockout period. Ouch!

ChargeHQ said the WallBox was “Stopped”. The power drain was added to the “House” load. I had to unplug the car to stop charging.
According to the Wallbox, it’s “OCPP Connecting If you’re still waiting after 5 minutes check the URL or contact your OCPP provider”. I’ve been waiting 30 minutes, so I’m contacting my OCPP provider - ChargeHQ.

The Wallbox is connected to the internet.
ChargeHQ shows the status of the Smart Charger as “SuspendedEVSE”.

I tried disconnecting and reconnecting OCPP. It restarted the charger, but put me back into the same state.

Any ideas what’s going wrong here?
What can I do to re-establish contol?

BTW, now that ChargeHQ has been acquired by Amber, is there some way to merge my ChargeHQ account into my Amber account?

jbanyer · 5 February 2025 23:32

Hi @KingSt42Power . Apologies for this very late reply.

There is a known issue with Wallbox chargers where they stop behaving correctly over OCPP. The fix is to power cycle the Wallbox, and if that doesn’t work perform a factory reset of the Wallbox. Wallbox recommend the factory reset but in most cases a power cycle is enough.

There was also an OCPP connectivity bug in Charge HQ which should have been fixed (or at least improved) on Feb 5th. I doubt this was the problem though.

Cheers,
Jay.

KingSt42Power · 6 February 2025 03:56

Jay, thanks for responding.

I had tried power cycling several times,including off at the main switch for >1hr and restart, with no change. I’d also asked Wallbox support, who gave the pretty much the same response as you.
I was about to do the factory reset, but it gave a warning saying

“Revert to original settings?
This action permanently deletes all data in the charger.
Some settings will need to be re-configured by an authorised installer”

I didn’t want to have to call in an installer, so sent a message back to Wallbox asking for confirmation.

Here’s the weird part - while I was composing the email, ChargeHQ connected to the charger! This is after several days of pending connections.
ChargeHQ said the charger was in “Unknown” state and was claimed to be drawing 4.1kW. However, there was nothing plugged in. The other oddity is ChargeHQ now says it’s a “Pulsar Max”, not a “Pulsar Plus”. About the only extra thing I’d done to (maybe?) cause the reconnection was going as far into a reset as the warning screen and cancelling out. I power cycled the Wallbox. It reconnected (still as “Pulsar Max”), but this time correctly identified the state as “unplugged”. It’s since behaved correctly with the “Always Charge” threshold, and in 10 minutes or so I’ll know if the block out works.

Wallbox have said “all fixed, nothing more to see, close the case”, which is dissapointing, because no one has explained what happened. I’ve asked them to clarify the “authorised installer” thing. I can’t see what there would be for them to “re-configure”. If I get confirmation that it doesn’t need external help, I’ll try the reset to see if that corrects the model name.

I know nothing about the OCPP protocol, but on general principles, either the Wallbox is sending a model name string of text to ChargeHQ, or, it’s sending some kind of ID, which ChargeHQ is looking up in a table from “somewhere” to figure out what to display. I’m hoping that someone who understands the protocol will say “Aha!” and maybe figure something useful out about what’s going on from that strange symptom.

Thanks again for your assistance. Isn’t it amazing how many first world problems we can set ourselves up for?

KingSt42Power · 12 February 2025 01:35

For anyone else who finds themselves here…

I tried disconnecting OCPP, rebooting the Wallbox, deleting the charger from ChargeHQ and reconnecting to see if it would fix the incorrect name. It didn’t, so the next option is the “reset”. I was assurred the “authorised installer” warning only applies to a “hard reset”, which involves opening the physical box, so “nothing to worry about”.

I’ve now done a reset on the Wallbox PulsarPlus.

A few “gotcha’s”
After the reset the app wouldn’t reconnect. “Connection failed, try restarting”.
To get back in I cleared both the cache and data from the phone. I was then able to reconnect and configure WiFi.
The app said there was a software update, but I needed to connect by WiFi to request it. The phone wouldn’t connect by WiFi. I was able to connect from a PC via the web page and request the update. Strangely, the reported “up to date” version I was running was v.6.1.19 (updated in Jan 2024), but the new update is v.5.17.18 which looks lower to me.

Again, I reconnected to ChargeHQ via OCPP. After all that, the charger is still incorrectly labelled as “Pulsar Max”. I asked Wallbox support about the version number, and the incorrect label. They said:

“You’re right to be concerned about the software version appearing lower after the update. It’s possible that the previous version was withdrawn due to unforeseen issues. We understand this can be confusing, and we appreciate you bringing it to our attention.”

Odd. If that were the case I’d have expected the “withdrawn” version number to have been flagged on the original problem description.

About the label, they’re pointing the finger back at ChargeHQ

“Regarding the ChargeHQ issue, we can confirm that your charger is indeed a Pulsar Plus. The discrepancy in their system is likely an issue on their end, and unfortunately, we don’t have direct control over how they identify and display devices. We recommend contacting their support team directly to report this inaccuracy. They should be able to rectify it on their platform.
While the ChargeHQ misidentification might be frustrating, it shouldn’t affect the functionality of your charger. The important thing is that the charger itself is working correctly and communicating with our system.”

Should I report the misidentification as a separate case?

Thanks for your attention.

Oh, one other thing (another case?) what are the chances of getting some kind of notification from ChargeHQ when/if the OCPP connection is lost? Have I missed a setting?

jbanyer · 12 February 2025 05:02

Regarding the incorrect default label “Pulsar Max”, that is almost certainly a bug in Charge HQ, which I’ll fix. Wallbox are correct in that it won’t impact anything - it’s entirely cosmetic. You can edit the name under Settings → My Equipment → Smart Charger if you wish.

Regarding notifications, it’s a tricky one because many chargers go offline extremely often, and most go offline occasionally. We’re working on ways to improve notifications.

KingSt42Power · 12 February 2025 05:47

Jay,

Thanks for a very quick response. I was hoping the label was cosmetic, but before the unexpected disconnection which started everything, the name was correct “PulsarPlus”, so was worried it was a symptom of a problem. I hadn’t realised I could change it myself! I’ll leave it as is, so I can report back that you’ve fixed it (Obviously not urgent).

Regarding the notifications, I can see why you might not want to turn them on for everyone. Maybe it could be optional?

As far as I can tell, the OCPP connection had been continuous for several months.

Why it matters to me, is the disconnection put the charger in a state where it charged at full current during our demand window. This is one of the main reasons I use ChargeHQ - to block out the demand window. It happened to be on the last day of a month where we’d managed to have virtually no grid consumption during our demand window. By charging the car at full rate during the demand window for more than 30 minutes, it cost about $50 extra on our bill. If I’d known it was disconnected from OCPP I could have unplugged the car and saved the money.

First world problem! We’re very happy with ChargeHQ, and very happy to see that Amber is supporting it (I had sent a message to Amber saying “you don’t need to do Amber for EVs, use ChargeHQ instead!”)

Thanks again.

jbanyer · 12 February 2025 20:56

@KingSt42Power unwanted charging during a demand window is definitely a problem that we don’t want happening. The Wallbox should not start charging when it goes offline - Charge HQ specifically configures the Wallbox to avoid that, but perhaps it’s not working sometimes.

Can you confirm the date and time when this occurred?

Are you able to test if you can repeat the issue? If you need a convenient way to simulate a network outage you can open Settings → My Equipment → Smart Charger → Charger Test Tool and click the red Prevent Connection button.

Also, when your EV is unplugged is the Halo LED on the Wallbox green or yellow? I would expect it to be green.

KingSt42Power · 13 February 2025 07:16

Interesting! So, you’re saying the charger should know about and honour the block out periods, even if it disconnects?

The date was 31st January. ChargeHQ was connected in the afternoon, and the car was plugged in. ChargeHQ shows 2kWh from the grid between 14:00 and 15:00, which matches the Amber usage records (orange highlight in the table below). ChargeHQ doesn’t show any of the later charging, which I think confirms the charger was disconnected, but I don’t know when. I don’t think we had any network issues in the house.
The demand window is highlighted in yellow. The charger correctly turned off at 15:00. The car was unplugged at about 16:30 and plugged in again at about 19:00. I’m not sure if it immediately started charging. About 20:45 I noticed a significant power drain (through ChargeHQ), which appeared to be the house, but the charger was in the “unknown state”. I unplugged the car, but the demand window damage had already been done. The graph shows peak 30 minute consumption per day throughout January.

I’ll try and find a suitable time to do a test. I’m guessing that the trigger was disconnecing and reconnecting the car while the charger was disconnected from ChargeHQ?

Charge into a block out period.
Unplug the car
Create network outage
Plug car back in before block out expires, see if it starts charging.

Our halo light is turned off, so I don’t know what colour. I’ve never really been able to figure out what the colours and patterns mean. I remember reading the documentation about it, but it didn’t make much sense. I’ll turn the halo light back on for the above test. and note the colours.

Thanks for your interest!

jbanyer · 14 February 2025 01:06

@KingSt42Power thanks very much for the info.

The issue on 31st Jan was actually caused by a networking issue at Charge HQ. Basically Charge HQ did not realise your charger was offline (after a restart of Charge HQ backend). Your charger was trying to reconnect but was unable to due to the issue at Charge HQ.

Charge HQ configures the Wallbox so that when offline, when a vehicle is plugged in it will start charging. If it didn’t work this way there would be no way to start charging if Charge HQ was down (although perhaps it could be started using the Wallbox app - I’ll verify that).

The issue at Charge HQ was fixed as of 5th Feb 15:00, so this particular issue should not happen again. Apologies for the extra demand charge on your bill, and thanks again for the detailed info.

jbanyer · 14 February 2025 02:12

@KingSt42Power FYI your charger does not know about the schedule when offline. The way it works is:

When your charger goes offline (which in your case is rare, according to the logs), it will not start charging if the car was plugged in and not charging at the time. It will remain stopped as long as the charger is offline.

However, if you (re)plug your car in while the charger is offline, it will start charging, regardless of your Charge HQ schedule. This is a deliberate choice by the designers of Charge HQ, because otherwise there might be no way to get charging started. Although as mentioned, perhaps it could be started with the Wallbox app.

This design choice is a trade-off, and when such choices are unclear we tend to pick the one that results in the car charging, as we figure that unwanted charging is better than an unexpected low battery. But perhaps demand charges change that decision, since the cost of a single 30 minute unwanted charge can be quite high.

If you were given the choice, how would you like or expect it to work?

KingSt42Power · 14 February 2025 20:25

Jay,

Aha! That explains the disconnection. Always good to get a root cause.

After the disconnection on 31st Jan I was unable to reconnect. It reconnected spontaneously on 4th Feb a bit before 12:00. I know that because I was in the middle of writing an email to Wallbox support. When I started the email OCPP was disconnected, but a few minutes later it connected. ChargeHQ was reporting a 4.1kW drain even with nothing connected. Here’s an extract of the email

Rebooting the Wallbox seems to have fixed everything, other than the misnaming.

From what you’ve said, it sounds like even if there was some kind of notification mechanism, it wouldn’t have triggered if you had a network outage. Nothing you can do about that.

I think you’ve made the right choice to fail in a way that doesn’t stop the charger from working. I assume, worst case, I can use the Wallbox app to turn off OCPP and control it directly.

My lesson is to always check ChargeHQ when we plug in. I would have either seen the immediate on, or the disconnected state and realised there was a problem. I usually do check to set price limits according to the Amber predictions. I think my wife plugged the car in that night (her car).

I think you’ve given me a very full explanation as to what went wrong, why, why it’s unlikely to happen again, and how we can avoid similar issues in future. Thanks!

If you’re interested I can send you the email chain from Wallbox (just send me an email address).

KingSt42Power · 15 February 2025 22:43

Apologies, I didn’t realise email responses would be published here.