A Reference Architecture for Smart Charging Management Systems for Electric Vehicles

Smart charging management systems for electric vehicles (SCMSs) enable the effective management of electric vehicle (EV) charging processes using smart technologies. Numerous SCMS technologies have been available for different stakeholders, e.g., EV drivers, charging station managers, and car manufacturers. Despite the ever-increasing interest in SCMSs, the literature lacks in reusable, standardised architecture design that reduces the effort for the development of quality SCMSs. In this paper, we propose a reference architecture (RA) for SCMSs. Our RA design is based on our comprehensive domain analysis that encompasses the analysis of the existing literature and commercial technologies which have been supported by our survey on EV drivers. In our RA, we provide four different viewpoints. The context viewpoint classifies the potential stakeholders and their roles and responsibilities. The module viewpoint defines the software implementation units and their modules that can be used for implementing any SCMSs. The component and connector viewpoint defines the executing parts of any SCMSs and their organisations into layers. The allocation viewpoint defines how the executable components can be mapped into the physical devices. We validated our RA design via prototyping and surveying to measure the RA’s applicability in real-world scenarios and usability for stakeholders.