The number of charging station networks will increase rapidly over the next few years as the transition to electric vehicles accelerates. Charge Star is a mature, robust, secure and scalable enterprise level charging station management system that provides charging station network operators with class leading features such as revenue reporting, multiple payment methods, payment to the network operator’s merchandising account, charging session activation via smart phone app or RFID or credit card, usage reporting, status reporting, and remote management of charging stations.

Each network operator is provided with their own instance of Charge Star hosted in a datacentre of their choice. There is one database per instance. Customer data is siloed and is not accessible across instances. The network operator or managed services provider can give web portal access to its own customers who may have charging stations hosted on the network. Granular permission levels ranging from view to admin can be granted to customers depending on requirements.

The NEXTCHARGE smart phone application can be branded with the network operator livery and advertising logos. NEXTCHARGE will only show the charging stations belonging to designated network operator when configured in white label mode. Charge Star can be configured so that stations are not displayed on the NEXTCHARGE smart phone application. A smart phone application is not required where charging sessions are activated by credit card or RFID card or where stations are in a private car park.

Staff of charging station providers can be issued with a corporate RFID card. The corporate RFID card allows staff to charge for free on the network as opposed to members of the public who pay. This arrangement may be suitable where a network operator such as a taxi company creates its own network but wishes to share the network with members of the public.