ESB eCars charging network live data

Zenith74

Hey guys,

I thought it might be interesting to see what info I could get from the ESB eCars charging network data. Primarily I wanted to see if I could find a way to figure out utilisation on some of the busier spots, but it will take some time to build that up. In the meantime though I pulled together some interesting live (well, updated every hour or two at the moment) info such as a list of fast chargers that are offline, how many of each charger type there are etc.

Any thoughts on other metrics I could try and put together that might be useful? Obviously I'm limited to the info provided by eCars, so more or less what you see in the app!


https://www.reddit.com/r/evs_ireland/comments/9yhe95/esb_ecars_charging_network_live_info/

n97 mini

http://cpinfo.ie/

slave1

Historic data would be nice, the fast charger in Athlone must be 3+months out of action at this stage and probably hitting 4+months for the year overall

ELM327

Interesting site that CPINFo
Looking at the blanch FCP, someone used the DC for 3.42 hours from 11.30am till 2.30pm on Nov 7th.
This is great data supporting the need for payment for charging

ELM327

slave1 wrote: »

Historic data would be nice, the fast charger in Athlone must be 3+months out of action at this stage and probably hitting 4+months for the year overall

You can get historic data on cp info

I see the athlone charger is out for some time

Fully Occupied Status Last Occured:



65d 18h 30m ago

daheff

i suppose one thing you could extrapolate is the chargers that are out of action but not reported as such? Maybe from sudden stop in usage?

Zenith74

LOL, just mike drop that in there and crush all my work for the last week!

Great site though, does somebody here run it do you know? I'd love to see a line in there showing the utilisation for say peak hours (say 08:00-22:00), as 11% for Midway does not feel representative when 100% of the time I arrive there is somebody already there :-P

Zenith74

ELM327 wrote: »

Interesting site that CPINFo
Looking at the blanch FCP, someone used the DC for 3.42 hours from 11.30am till 2.30pm on Nov 7th.
This is great data supporting the need for payment for charging

The ESB data just says "Occupied" when you query it, no session number or anything like that, and by the looks of it cpinfo gets a copy every 5 minutes. So if people were charging back-to-back with only a minute or so to change over to the next car, you'd see it as constantly occupied on cpinfo.ie I'd say. Keep the pitch fork sharp just in case, but it can probably go back in the closet for the minute

ELM327

But there's other data with like 1 min between sessions, I don't think it's that.
I think it's more likely that pitchfork is needed!!

Zenith74

Out of interest I just looked up a time I visited Midway a week ago and two cars charged back-to-back in front of me, then me, followed by another one as I was leaving. It shows as a single 2.5hour block on cpinfo.ie. I'd say it just depends how frequently they decided to hammer the ESB API

n97 mini

Zenith74 wrote: »

LOL, just mike drop that in there and crush all my work for the last week!

Great site though, does somebody here run it do you know?

Pretty sure they're not on here. It's a guy that posts in the IEVOA FB group that does it.

Zenith74 wrote: »

Out of interest I just looked up a time I visited Midway a week ago and two cars charged back-to-back in front of me, then me, followed by another one as I was leaving. It shows as a single 2.5hour block on cpinfo.ie. I'd say it just depends how frequently they decided to hammer the ESB API

ecars update the status every 5 mins (iirc), and cpinfo polls the ecars website every 5 mins. There is no API (afaik), he's doing old fashioned screen scraping.

rolion

How do we know the IDs for the charger points !?
Well,unless you go there and take a note

n97 mini

rolion wrote: »

How do we know the IDs for the charger points !?
Well,unless you go there and take a note

From here:

https://www.esb.ie/our-businesses/ecars/charge-point-map

Locate the CP you want and click on it.

ELM327

n97 mini wrote: »

Pretty sure they're not on here. It's a guy that posts in the IEVOA FB group that does it.



ecars update the status every 5 mins (iirc), and cpinfo polls the ecars website every 5 mins. There is no API (afaik), he's doing old fashioned screen scraping.

I was led to believe there was an api and ecars let him have it?
The cp info site is more accurate than the ecars live app for outages etc, it seems based on the same source as zap map instead of ecars

Zenith74

ELM327 wrote: »

I was led to believe there was an api and ecars let him have it?

I asked them for a proper API and got nowhere. However a bit of sleuthing of the app and I found where it gets its data from (https://www.esb.ie/electric-cars/kml/charging-locations.kml if you're interested), it's a little messy but can be programmatically parsed easily enough. Looking at the data on cpinfo.ie, I suspect it uses this file as well...

Would love to contact the creator of cpinfo.ie and see if we can do a little more with it, if anybody has a way of encouraging them to come here and post .

KCross

n97 mini wrote: »

Pretty sure they're not on here. It's a guy that posts in the IEVOA FB group that does it.



ecars update the status every 5 mins (iirc), and cpinfo polls the ecars website every 5 mins. There is no API (afaik), he's doing old fashioned screen scraping.

Its a bit more sophisticated than that. There is a file you can download in "realtime" and parse it.

Zenith74 wrote: »

I asked them for a proper API and got nowhere. However a bit of sleuthing of the app and I found where it gets its data from (https://www.esb.ie/electric-cars/kml/charging-locations.kml if you're interested), it's a little messy but can be programmatically parsed easily enough. Looking at the data on cpinfo.ie, I suspect it uses this file as well...

Would love to contact the creator of cpinfo.ie and see if we can do a little more with it, if anybody has a way of encouraging them to come here and post .

There was this guy who was looking at that same file. Not sure if he is Mr cpinfo or not.
https://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2057705251

Zenith74

Turns out I should have just Googled it!

Looks like cpinfo.ie was created as part of an MSc thesis - more info here http://www.mlopt.com/?p=6598.

Highlights -
The data represent a snapshot of the status of the charge point network taken at five-minute intervals.
...the charge point map sometimes goes through periods, of up to several days, where the status data are not updated. This is reflected in the datasets by statuses that don’t change for unusually long periods of time.

_dof_

ELM327 wrote: »

I was led to believe there was an api and ecars let him have it?
The cp info site is more accurate than the ecars live app for outages etc, it seems based on the same source as zap map instead of ecars

I would have though that Zap Map uses the same kml file to get the data as cpinfo.ie and the ecars own map, but I don't see how it could, since Zap Map has been showing the fast charger in Athlone as available for a long time, when it's (correctly) marked as out-of-service on that kml file. So, it's hard to trust it.

Zap Map does have the handy feature that the ecars map doesn't have though, when the CP is busy, it shows how long it's been busy for. Handy to know that when predicting if a busy enroute CP is likely to still be busy at your estimated time of arrival.

catharsis

Park Pointe, 5:42 connected to a fast charger on 7 Nov 2018 per cpinfo. ... is this a record ?

rolion

It will be nice if we can get our heads together and design a new app with new features...

For example,upon registration and validation:

- notification in real time of used or free points
- how long im igoing to stay at the CP with my car
- notifications peer-to-peer of offline CP stations
- ping-pong peer-to-peer while charging on estimated departure time so i can plan my waiting
- "sharing" of home CP, in private mode and in case of emergencies

Dunno...i havent used them too much to make a snag list BUT ... i wanna say a B I G "T H A N K Y O U " to ecars staff that took my peculliar phone calls asking for remote activation or stopage of the charging at public points...and that with no obligation to be nice on the phone,at any time ! Again,thanks !

ELM327

_dof_ wrote: »

I would have though that Zap Map uses the same kml file to get the data as cpinfo.ie and the ecars own map, but I don't see how it could, since Zap Map has been showing the fast charger in Athlone as available for a long time, when it's (correctly) marked as out-of-service on that kml file. So, it's hard to trust it.

Zap Map does have the handy feature that the ecars map doesn't have though, when the CP is busy, it shows how long it's been busy for. Handy to know that when predicting if a busy enroute CP is likely to still be busy at your estimated time of arrival.

And also when Zap Map is wrong, the user can update it, unlike the ecars app. So you know if someone has marked it as down (eg athlone) then it's down regardless of what ecars or zap map say

Zenith74

rolion wrote: »

It will be nice if we can get our heads together and design a new app with new features...

For example,upon registration and validation:

- notification in real time of used or free points
- how long im igoing to stay at the CP with my car
- notifications peer-to-peer of offline CP stations
- ping-pong peer-to-peer while charging on estimated departure time so i can plan my waiting
- "sharing" of home CP, in private mode and in case of emergencies

Dunno...i havent used them too much to make a snag list BUT ... i wanna say a B I G "T H A N K Y O U " to ecars staff that took my peculliar phone calls asking for remote activation or stopage of the charging at public points...and that with no obligation to be nice on the phone,at any time ! Again,thanks !

To be fair the Plugshare app does most of this as well as some great journey planning and also covers most of the world, give it a try if you haven't!

The only thing missing from PlugShare is the ""live"" data from eCars, I reached out to them last week and they say in other territories the charge operators provide an API to PlugShare to show that live data, so it sounds like it's all implemented in the app, just need to get the data in there. I'll keep chasing them on it and see if they can take that KML file and use it.

bipedalhumanoid

rolion wrote: »

How do we know the IDs for the charger points !?
Well,unless you go there and take a note

CPInfo.Ie now has search capability. Just type a partial address or charge point Id and select the one you want from the list.

ELM327

bipedalhumanoid wrote: »

CPInfo.Ie now has search capability. Just type a partial address or charge point Id and select the one you want from the list.

It's no longer maintained though, so the new chargers don't show up correctly or at all in some cases

Black_Knight

ELM327 wrote: »

It's no longer maintained though, so the new chargers don't show up correctly or at all in some cases

Where do they get their data from? Does ESB/e-cars have a developer api you can request access to? Their returned data on https://esb.ie/our-businesses/ecars/charge-point-map is horrificly formatted for development.

EDIT: I see earlier posts in their thread highlighting the lack of an API

ELM327

Black_Knight wrote: »

Where do they get their data from? Does ESB/e-cars have a developer api you can request access to? Their returned data on https://esb.ie/our-businesses/ecars/charge-point-map is horrificly formatted for development.

EDIT: I see earlier posts in their thread highlighting the lack of an API

It's a javascript injection within a function.
Awful to integrate with.

function createChargePointMap() { var myLatlng = new google.maps.LatLng(53.48150827154005, -7.857470703125); var myOptions = { zoom: 7, center: myLatlng, mapTypeId: google.maps.MapTypeId.ROADMAP }; // Intializing map by calling constructor map = new google.maps.Map(document.getElementById("map"), myOptions); var latlang = new google.maps.LatLng(53.48150827154005, -7.857470703125); map.setCenter(latlang); loadLayer('/ECARS/kml/charging-locations.kml');

diarmuid05

A lot of companies seem to be using openchargemap according to the list below

https://openchargemap.org/site/develop/apps

Haven't really looked at it, so not sure if its useful

bipedalhumanoid

ELM327 wrote: »

It's no longer maintained though, so the new chargers don't show up correctly or at all in some cases

That was caused by a bug. It's been fixed.

cpinfo

_dof_ wrote: »

I would have though that Zap Map uses the same kml file to get the data as cpinfo.ie and the ecars own map, but I don't see how it could, since Zap Map has been showing the fast charger in Athlone as available for a long time, when it's (correctly) marked as out-of-service on that kml file. So, it's hard to trust it.

Zap Map uses an API. There have been times in the past where the ECars app is offline for live data and zap map still manages to get the live status. As you point out, that sometimes works the other way around too.

I have discussed gaining access to the API with E-Cars and the response is that they have a "commercial relationship" with zap map.

cpinfo

catharsis wrote: »

Park Pointe, 5:42 connected to a fast charger on 7 Nov 2018 per cpinfo. ... is this a record ?

It is very unlikely that this is one vehicle plugged in. It is more likely that there were a consistent line of vehicles plugging in one after the other.

BTW, if a vehicle is plugged into a rapid charger after the charge session has ended, the charge point shows as available on the e-cars app and cpinfo.

10-10-20

diarmuid05 wrote: »

A lot of companies seem to be using openchargemap according to the list below

https://openchargemap.org/site/develop/apps

Haven't really looked at it, so not sure if its useful

I've started appending data to openchargemap. It has potential to be fantastic and is supporting bulk uploads from some of the large charge suppliers, so holds weight.

eddhorse

Great link thanks for that