In this episode of EV Musings, Gary Comerford discusses the accuracy of electric vehicle chargers with Craig Marsden from EVCI Global. They explore the discrepancies between what chargers report and what is actually delivered, highlighting the lack of regulation compared to traditional fuel stations. Craig explains the testing process and the potential for a diamond standard accreditation for accurate chargers.

Guest Details:

Craig Marsden : I lead the technical and operational strategy at EVCI Global, specialising in the accuracy of electricity delivered, future compliance, and trustworthiness of public EV charging. My work focuses on real-world testing and independent verification, ensuring every kWh billed is every kWh delivered. With experience across the UK and Ireland, I work directly with charge point operators, regulators, and fleets to raise standards and future-proof infrastructure. I head the development of the EVCI Diamond Standard – the UK’s only accreditation for EV charger accuracy, aligned with MID Class A (±2%) thresholds. My goal is simple: build a charging ecosystem drivers can trust, operators can market, and regulators can stand behind.

Craig's Website

This season of the podcast is sponsored by Zapmap, the free to download app that helps EV drivers search, plan, and pay for their charging.

Links in the show notes:

• Italy launches electric vehicle bonus - electrive.com - Cool Thing

Episode produced by Arran Sheppard at Urban Podcasts: https://www.urbanpodcasts.co.uk

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Hi, I'm Gary and this is episode 277 of EV Musings, a podcast about renewables, electric vehicles and things that are interesting to electric vehicle owners. And on the show today, we'll be looking at how accurate EV chargers are in terms of giving you what you're paying for.

Now, our main topic of discussion today is charger accuracy. Now, I don't know whether you know, but there is a department in each local authority that is responsible for ensuring that goods sold to the public meet certain standards when it comes to

contents, ingredients and volumes. This is the department that evaluates weigh scales, for example, so that if you go to the local butcher and ask for a half a pound of sliced ham, you actually get a half a pound of sliced ham and not a third of a pound of sliced ham. When it comes to petrol stations, this department will regularly go around with their measuring cans and dispense a litre of petrol or diesel into them. If the pump reads more than a litre, when the litre measure is full, that's an issue because it means

you're not getting what you pay for. However, at the moment, there is no such thing for charging stations. And that's a problem. But it's a problem in two stages. One which is physics and can't be overcome. And the other one of which is, well, we'll come on to that shortly. From a physics point of view, the issue is inefficiencies.

For example, if I plug my car in at a 7kW charger and start a charge, the charger will in theory provide 7kW of energy from the unit. It will travel through the circuits in the device, down the charging cable, to my car, through the inverter in my car and into the battery. As that happens, the amount of energy in the circuit will decrease. The charger may be pushing out 7kW but the car may be receiving 6.5kW. I'm paying for charging at 7kW but I'm getting

but I'm not getting 7kW of charging. And more importantly, and this is where the difference is, after 10 hours on the charger, the device will require payment for 70kWh of energy, but the car will only have received 65kWh of energy. 5kWh of energy has disappeared in the process. There is a whole discussion to be had about who should pay for that 5kWh. From a CPO point of view, they've provided 70kWh through their device and want to be paid for it. From a customer point of view,

They've only received 65 kilowatt hours and that's what they want to pay for. But the key here is that charger has actually dispensed the amount of energy it says it has dispensed and charged you for. If I go back to our ham slicing example, you'd only want to pay for the ham you received, not the ham that the butcher sliced up. Any bits and pieces that didn't make it across or through the slicer are not your responsibility, right?

But the sort of losses I'm talking about and what I want to discuss in a bit of detail today are actually related to a different sort of loss in charging. It's the equivalent of putting the finger on the scale when measuring the ham. It's when the charger dispenses 60 kilowatt hours of energy but charges you for 70 kilowatt hours of energy.

How much of that 60 kilowatt hours you receive is not the question. It's how much the charger has told you it gave you. And this is the same as when a petrol pump tells you that it's charged you for a litre, but it's only actually given you nine-tenths of a litre. The measure is inaccurate. Now you would think that because everything is electronic and there's no way of physically underreporting actual electric current that this wouldn't happen. But you'd be wrong. So let's talk to someone

who can tell us more about this?

Hi, my name is Craig Marsden and I work at EVCI Global.

Now, when we met at a conference recently, I was fascinated when you shared a couple of stats about charger inaccuracies. And I want to talk about two things with you today. The first one is, what are these inaccuracies? What do you mean when you talk about charger inaccuracies and how do they occur? And secondly, I want to talk about, ⁓ EVCI Global, what you're doing, how you're gathering data and what you're wanting to do with it. So let me start with the first question.

Where would be the best algorithm to use the analysis to assess where you should assess about charge of the increase in someone? I'll just talk about the things that you said first, please. One of these, you know, different things working with about charge analysis is that you have to talk about the results of the algorithm, which is how the data will taste, so what you can do

with it. let's talk about something else. Something more exactly...

Tell me what exactly we're talking about when we're about the inaccuracies

I'm going talk about the matrices and know what they I'll take you through that in a moment.

that you're looking at, because I know we talked on this podcast before about charger losses in cables. So the charge point puts out a certain number of kilowatts. The car receives a slightly less number of kilowatts than the differences in the charger cable. But that's not what you're talking about, is it?

care of it.

What we're talking about is what's delivered on the display of the charger versus what's actually been delivered to the vehicle. So any losses that occur on the vehicle side, we don't measure in any way, shape or form. And I understand that that's down to the vehicle. That's nothing to do with what's been delivered. What we're measuring is what the charge point is delivered and saying it delivered.

versus what it's actually delivered. So we have a very, very precise bit of equipment that is accurate to 0.1 % and is itself calibrated. And it tells us what's been delivered versus what the charges told us has been delivered.

So if I give a specific example, I can plug in a charger and I can charge for 10 or 15 minutes and the charger says, we have actually sent you 20 kilowatt hours of energy. But what actually happened is the charger has sent might be less than that or it might be more than that. Is that what we're actually talking about?

Absolutely correct. in massive extremities that we have, the biggest under delivery we've ever had was minus 37%.

So essentially you've paid for 10 kilowatts and you've got 6.3. And the biggest over delivery we've ever had was 30 % where I paid for 10 kilowatts and I got 14 in a bit.

When you say kilowatts, you mean kilowatt hours, don't you?

Hello what hours apologies should we do that again?

So why is

this happening then?

At the end of the day, I'm not here to work out the how, why's and when's. At the end of the day, the system was put in at speed, I'd say. So the chargers and the charge point operators, to be fair, weren't ever told that they had to be accurate to any degree. But if it was wet fuel, for example, diesel or petrol, if you have an under delivery of anything more than 0.5%, weight and measure would close that fuel station down.

And if it has an over delivery of more than 1%, then that will be closed down as well. And until they were recalibrated by the fuel pump manufacturer, then that would stay closed.

So sort of piggying back on that, how are you measuring the differences? Because you mentioned wet fuel. And in the old days, the guys from Trading Standards would come around with a ⁓ liter or a gallon can, they'd pump a gallon in, and then they'd look and see what was actually showing on the display. And if there was a difference, then that was an issue, as you said. But how are you actually doing that with electric vehicle chargers?

Thanks for watching. ⁓

what we have is a unit called a man in the middle unit and what that does is we'll plug your charger point into our very very very accurate metering equipment and then we'll then plug that into either the vehicle that we use sometimes or we'll put it into a load box.

Another thing that we use if it's AC is electric vans as well. And what we do is we just literally measure the amount of kilowatt hours that's been delivered to us versus the kilowatt hours that's shown on the screen.

Now the government have something called the Office for Product Safety and Standards. Why is this not their job?

Yeah.

Well, it should be their job to be fair, but it's a mystery to me as to why it's not. At this moment in time, we're at the second stage of a grant with the National Physical Laboratory so that we can put together a framework with them to measure the differences in EV charger outputs across vehicle to grid, across EHGVs and the wider charger network. And they then fire the information through to OPSS, who would then

make their decisions on it and then put that through to weights and measures but why do not measure that this moment in time is beyond me to be fair.

So the question that jumps out when I'm talking about this or when we're talking about this is, you know, in practice you're getting, you may be getting something you're not paid for, but generally I believe you're going to be not getting something that you have paid for. There's going to be an under delivery. You're paying for more than you've actually received. Is this fraud?

I don't think we have much of a problem with It's practice.

I couldn't tell you whether it was or wasn't. I'd definitely say that it wasn't deliberate in any way shape or form. I think the place that we're at is the government wanted charge points putting into the ground as quickly as possible and that's what we've got and the reasons for why they're inaccurate isn't down to me.

I can just tell you whether they are or whether they're not. So if you think of our company and our services, we're more like the MOT station. And then the charge point providers will go back to the manufacturers, I would guess, as the suppliers of the equipment to work out why they're not working the way they should.

In your experience, do charges generally over-dispense? I.e. you get more than you pay for or under-dispense. You pay for more than you get.

It depends on the margin of deviance that you're talking about if you're going to our 2 % I'd say that a lot of the charges that we've tested have passed at 2 % and But I'd say that more under deliver than over deliver. Generally you're looking around 15 % of the marketplace that we've measured and

By all means, we haven't measured anything like 80,000 charges. But a third of those will definitely not pass our certification, if you like, at 2%.

Now, I know you've already said it before, just tell me again, what's the most egregious differences that you've seen?

So minus 37 % is the largest under delivery I've ever seen and plus 30 % is the biggest over delivery I've ever seen. So an under delivery will be you haven't received the electricity you've paid for and an over delivery means you've had a lot more than you have paid for.

Okay, so I've got two questions that follow up from that and I'll give you some provisos around these in a second. Is this a CPO issue or is it a charger manufacturer issue?

and it's happening.

Yes.

I'm

There's a question for you. I would say that there's a number of different things that influence whether they're accurate or not. So for example, in California, they're saying that your charger needs to be 1 % accurate as it comes off the production line, but then 2 % accurate once it's put into the ground and it's being commissioned. So there's a number of different things that can make the charger drift over time, for example, or down to

the way that the design was made in the first place or down to weather factors so there's a whole host of different reasons as to why they may or may not be accurate. Generally stuff that's come out of Germany and a Zeitrich is pretty good but not everything's perfect so this is why we set up what we set up so that people could find out both ChargePoint operators and then end users and what the ChargePoints are actually putting out.

that leads me very nicely onto this second part of my question. Now, I know you're confined, I think, by NDAs with the ChargePoint operators that you're working with. And I'm speaking with Vicky Reid from Charge UK in a couple of weeks as part of the End of Season roundtable. And I'll bring this topic up with her. are you seeing any patterns appearing? I mean, you've already talked about the German hardware being a little bit better than some of the other ones.

Do you discrepancies that you're seeing more of a certain CPOs that are coming up with red flags or is it just certain hardware? Is it certain DNOs? What kind of underlying factors are you seeing that play into this?

I'd say that there's a number of different factors and some charge point providers I'm looking at have seemed to come up with consistently fantastic results. Some charge point providers have got better as they've progressed and some charge point providers have got worse as they've gone along. I think I'd like to say there's so many different factors that come into this and we've only been testing these for a year and a half now and I think the longer that we test, the more information we'll gather and the more of a

an accurate forecast we can give over which charges or charge points are given what they should be given.

So leaning on from that, talk to me a little bit about what EVCI Global are planning on doing moving forward. Because you've talked to me already about the fact that you're going out, you're putting your, what's the phrase you used, a man in the middle piece of tech in there, and that's capturing data. What are you going to do with that?

Yeah.

Well, the plan long term is for us to accredit sites with our diamond standard accreditation. So, chargers and therefore, charger sites, the pass are, I think it's a pretty fair and lenient pass rate of plus or minus 2%. will gain our diamond standard accreditation badge that they'll be able to display on the front of the charges. Any network equipment that they've got should be able to get that.

and the totem pole will also be allowed to display our logo as well so people will know without guessing which charges are in fact accurate and that's our way forward. We're also in with national physical laboratory we're trying to put the framework together that we talked about earlier so that long term we'll be testing all of the charges in the marketplace and I thought we won't be the only company that'll be doing that we're just the only company that are right now.

So when companies such as yourself that are reasonably new to the market, I mean, I know you said you've been around for, you know, doing this for a year, year and a half, but when you're approaching CPOs, what sort of pushback are you getting? Is your business case strong enough to encourage CPOs to pay for the service? Because I know you and I have had conversations and you did speak to one particular CPO and asked them whether they thought their charges were accurate. And they said, yes, absolutely. We're very, very happy about that.

And then you went on and measured one of those and found out that it was over delivering by 30%. So what sort of a reaction are you getting from the ChargePoint operators?

every charge point operator I've spoken to who wants to deliver an accurate amount of electricity have not had anyone that wants to be presented with the facts say that they want to do anything different.

So I'd say from a CPO point of view, they're very proactive on having this sorted out one way or another.

Now, I know you talked about this a few seconds back, but just talk a little bit more about the diamond certification. What do you expecting a ChargePoint operator to do with this certification? I yeah, it'll look good on a website. You've already talked about maybe putting it on the totem outside and on the individual charges. But is this something that you'd like to see incorporated into things like, oh, I don't know, Zapmap for example, so drivers can sort on charges with a diamond rating, for example?

Yeah, that's exactly where we'd like to be. So you can then choose which ones are diamond standard accredited.

so that you know for sure that you're getting exactly what you've paid for so you can trust and know that the charger that you're going to use will be fair.

Cool. Now is there a way to get this mandated by the government? Like we've already discussed, know, the trading standards people go out to wet fuel stations and they use their measuring equipment there. Is that something that can be mandated by the government for chargers or is it going to rely on companies such as yourselves to go out and actually do the measuring?

Is there a way to get this mandated by the government? I think we've already discussed the points that people have to make to get it to the centre of the Is that a good thing, to have a mandate by the government, or it to discourage it from being a country of such a

big My understanding is that it will be mandated by the government.

talk to me a little bit about what your offering is to the CPO, because we've said, okay, you go in and you'll speak to the CPO and you'll go out and do some measurements, but how does it actually work? Does a charge point operator say, can you go out and check all the charges at this site or all of our charges in this area? Or are you allowed to sort of randomly choose charges regardless of which CPO you're working with?

and then go back and confront them with the results. What actually happens? What's that process?

We don't really confront anyone with results so what we do is we invite people to work with us. We'll offer them a pilot site where we'll go out and test an entire site, present them with the results and we take it from there depending on how they do or don't like the results.

playing devil's advocate, because I tend to like to play devil's advocate. You've told us that you've encountered sites that have got large amounts of under delivery. I also know from conversations that we've had that you don't feel that it's right to actually name those. Is that ethical?

You're so stupid.

Yeah. Correct.

You you're taking these measurements and there are charges out there that you know are delivering less than people are paying for. Is there not an ethical statement to say you should be publishing, publicising those results?

No, don't think publicizing results helps anyone. think the thing to do is tell the charge point operator.

the charges aren't measuring the electricity correctly and then give them a chance to sort it out. Ultimately once it becomes regulation by the government then that'll be a different kettle of fish but we're only here to celebrate the good charges that have passed at this moment in time that's our job.

So you don't feel worried about the people who using the charger that's under delivering by 30 %?

I wouldn't go so far as to say I'm not concerned about them because I'm one of those people myself but at the end of the day this isn't something that's regulated by the government at this moment in time so until it is there's nothing we can do with that data other than feed it through to the CPOs and generally like I say they're massively receptive to that.

80, what do you say 80-odd 1000 charges across the UK. How many people have you got working on going around and evaluating these charges?

We have two full-time members of staff and three part-time members of staff.

And presumably for this to be something that is both valuable and accurate, you would need every charger to be evaluated at least once and then on a regular basis thereafter. Is that feasible with the headcount that you've got at the moment?

Yes.

over what period of time.

Well, I'd say over 12 months. So we can ramp up at the end of the day. It takes normally about a week for us to train someone up and then for them to get the certification that they're required to go onto fuel pump stations and so on it goes. It takes us about three months to have our equipment built. So I'm not really concerned about whether or not we can make those targets or not. We'll be OK.

Is there anything else you'd like the listeners or the people who are watching us on YouTube to know about EVCI Global or the work that you're doing before we close?

I'd just like them to give it out for our Diamond Standard certification and they'll know that the chargers fair

Wonderful. Thank you very much, Craig Marston. Thanks for your time. Much appreciated.

You're welcome.

So a couple of takeaways from this discussion. Charger misreporting is a real issue. It's widespread and it's an issue that isn't getting a great deal of attention. The charger that I referenced in this discussion was part of a conversation that Craig told me about that he'd spoken with InstaVault and he point blank asked them if their charger misreported and they said they don't. So he checked the charger and he posted that anyone wanted to get free electricity should basically go to this specific InstaVault charger

Because when you paid for 100 % of the charge, you actually got 130 % of the charge that you paid for because it was over-reporting or under-reporting, whichever. But he did also tell me that a lot of ChargePoint operators he spoke to will test their hardware in their workshops or office and they are accurate when they're put into the ground. But just like petrol pumps, things happen that can affect the accuracy, which is why charges and petrol pumps need to be rechecked on a regular basis.

Now one thing that I think has come out of this and Craig did mention it there is the concept of FOMO. Over time there will be a number of ChargePoint operators whose hardware will end up with a diamond certification. Now if you go to a location with several CPOs, only one of which has the diamond certification to indicate it's accurate, are you going to use their charger or are you going to use the other charger without the diamond?

More importantly, are you going to put out on social media that you've seen an uncertified charger? Will this help CPOs decide that they want their charges certified if they get bad publicity? We'll see. Shortly after this episode is published, I'll be spending a day on the road with Craig. We'll be going to a number of different ChargePoint operators and sites, and I will be asking senior management at those CPOs beforehand if they feel that their charges are misreporting at all. It'd be interesting to check the results against the management expectations.

So stay tuned to my social media for results.

Now it's time for a cool EV or renewable things show with your listeners. Italy has launched a 600 million euro bonus to pay people and small businesses to buy new electric vehicles. Private buyers can get up to 11,000 euros depending on income and a small business can get up to 20,000 euros but applicants must scrap an older Euro 5 or worse car and apply before buying. The scheme targets residents of cities of 50,000 plus people

I hope you enjoyed listening to today's show. was put together this week with the help of Craig Marsden. Many thanks for your time, Craig. Excellent discussion.

If you have any thoughts, comments, criticisms or other general messages to pass on to me, I can be reached at info at evmusings.com. On the socials I'm on bluesky at evmusings.bsky.social. I'm also on Instagram at evmusings where I post those little short videos in the odd podcast extract regularly. Why not follow me there?

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If you've reached this part of the podcast and are still listening, thank you. Why not let me know you've got to this point by messaging me at musingsv.beesky.social with the words undercharge, overcharge, wombling free. Hashtag if you know you know, nothing else. Thanks as always to my co-founder Simone. You know he's got big plans for next year. A World Electric Unicycle Day, a personal electric transport week and a Nobel Prize for the best use of an electric vehicle.

I told him there's a lot to think about with that and he said...

At the end of the day, I'm not here to work out the how, why's and when's.

Thanks for listening. Bye.