The full agenda — with receipts

Logistics, not content. Still, the first coffee queue is where CPOs, OEMs, DSOs and standards people meet in one room, and the OCPP-to-grid sessions that follow draw on all of those groups. Use it to find the people who own the integration problems you're facing.

Housekeeping and framing for a day that, judging by the agenda, is about interoperability with the grid and about security. Listen for what the organisers treat as the priority problems, since the agenda sets the tone for the rest of the conference.

The Open Charge Alliance maintains OCPP, the protocol most charge point operators depend on to talk to their hardware, so its priorities shape vendor roadmaps. The questions to ask are where OCPP development is heading and how much weight grid integration and security carry in that plan. Anyone buying chargers or backend software should care.

Charger-to-backend communication (OCPP) and DSO-to-DER communication (CSIP-AUS) were designed separately. Making them work together determines whether network operators can send dynamic limits and have chargers actually honour them. The session should answer where the interface sits, who translates between the two protocols, and what breaks in practice. CPOs, DSOs and backend vendors should pay attention.

Australia is described here as an early-adopter DSO market, so its experience is a preview for other markets that will face the same OCPP and grid-communication questions. ANU's view of the OCA and CSIP-AUS whitepaper process should show where the two communities agreed and where gaps remain. Policymakers and standards participants outside Australia should treat it as a field report.

Logistics, but the gap between the OCPP-to-DSO sessions and the local-controller talk is a good moment to compare notes with the people who will actually implement those interfaces.

Sites with multiple chargers, on-site DER and a grid connection agreement need a controller that keeps working when the cloud link drops. This session covers the OCPP 2.x topology options, EMS integration and offline behaviour. The practical test is whether a site stays safe and compliant when connectivity fails, and how much of that depends on architecture choices made at design time. Site designers, CPOs and EMS vendors should care most.

EV charging sits between critical-infrastructure rules, consumer-device regulation and energy-sector requirements, and it's unclear which of these will bind operators. The session promises a map of what applies now and what the sector can reasonably expect next. CPOs and hardware vendors should treat it as a way to plan compliance spend before mandates arrive.

The OCA guide lists 164 security measures, which is too many to implement at once, so the useful part is the prioritisation for Australian operators and CPOs. The questions are which measures matter first, what the real attack surface of network-connected chargers looks like, and what operators can realistically do with their current fleets. Anyone running or procuring networked chargers should come away with a short list.

Logistics. After a morning heavy on protocols and security, lunch is the best chance to test what you heard against the experience of operators and vendors facing the same implementation problems.

The VGN delegation attended the EU Plugfest and met industry, regulators, policy, research and grant bodies, so this is a comparison of Australia against where Europe is further along in interoperability and policy. The questions to ask are what Europe is doing that Australia isn't, and what is worth copying. Policy, standards and product teams should find it useful.

AEMO's 2026 ISP sets the system-level assumptions about coordinated and bidirectional charging that market design and investment will follow. The session looks at the barriers to access that those assumptions imply and the standards and capability uplift needed to reduce them. The questions are what the plan expects of EV charging, what is still missing for it to deliver value, and where CPOs and V2G vendors should position. Anyone building flexibility products should pay attention.

Breaks are where the real interoperability problems surface: CPO, CSMS vendor and hardware maker conversations about failed integrations tend to happen here, not on stage. Use it to find the people behind the OCPP pain points raised in the earlier sessions.

OCPP conformance is where interoperability claims meet reality, and the cost of getting it wrong shows up as field failures, truck rolls and stalled roaming deals. The session should clarify what OCTT conformance actually proves versus what only interoperability or chain testing reveals, and who should pay for each layer. Hardware makers, CSMS vendors and CPOs writing procurement specs should come away with a clear view of when full certification is worth the investment and when targeted debug testing is enough.

A public funder's view of where market support is heading shapes which charging, grid-integration and V2G projects get backed next. With only the title and ARENA's stated call for industry engagement to go on, the open questions are which structural barriers it considers unresolved, what kind of support it will offer beyond demonstration projects, and how CPOs and vendors can plug into it. Relevant for Australian operators and anyone planning around grant-funded deployment.

Smart charging and V2G only scale if load management and bidirectional control are standardized, and OCPP 2.1 is the protocol's answer; what comes after it signals where CSMS roadmaps need to go. The CharIN and KERI panel should show where testing and interoperability for bidirectional charging stand today and which gaps still block commercial V2G. CSMS developers, DNOs and fleet operators planning flexibility revenue should pay attention.

This marks the shift from strategy talk to hands-on testing days, where interoperability claims get checked against real implementations. Worth noting what the organizers flag as the priorities for the testing sessions.

Informal networking is where vendor-CPO pairings and test partnerships ahead of the testing days actually get arranged. Come with specific integration problems and find the counterpart who has already hit them.