How Best of Breed Charge Point Operators are Assuring Network Reliability

Every week, I talk with operators who are living two realities at once. On one hand, they’re scaling fast - expanding sites, deploying new hardware, and driving utilization. On the other, they’re juggling customer complaints, unreliable data, and the constant grind of keeping uptime high.

The best operators aren’t just managing that tension - they’re mastering it.

They’ve realized that reliability isn’t a metric you report; it’s a capability you build.

Reliability as a System, Not a KPI

Best-of-breed Charge Point Operators (CPOs) have stopped chasing “uptime” as a static number. Instead, they’re designing reliability as a system - one that predicts, detects, and resolves issues before they impact a driver.

The shift is from reactive troubleshooting to proactive reliability management. And it starts with a clear, connected view of the network.

That means integrating OCPP data with signals from power systems, telecoms, and payment gateways - spotting early warning signs like intermittent connectivity patterns, authorization failures, or unexpected drops in charge success rates before they turn into downtime.

Learning, Healing, and Scaling

This is where the real transformation happens.

Clockwork’s platform doesn’t just tell you something’s broken - it tells you why, recommends what to do next, and in many cases, takes that action itself.

Self-healing automation can reboot chargers, reset communication modules, and execute firmware updates autonomously. Meanwhile, technician dispatch is optimized with “backgrounders” that bundle probable causes, site history, and fix instructions before anyone even rolls a truck.

Every action - manual or automated - feeds back into the system, improving the next detection. That’s the closed loop in action.

Over time, the network learns. Issues that used to take hours to identify are now prevented entirely. And operators are freed to focus on growing their business - not firefighting the same five faults every week.

From “Uptime” to “Charge Success”

Top-tier operators are reframing success around driver outcomes, not just hardware performance.

“Uptime” is necessary, but it doesn’t tell the full story. A charger can be online and still fail to deliver a successful charge.

That’s why the leaders are measuring and improving charge success rate — moving from network availability to user reliability.

And they’re doing it with the same philosophy that defines every great system: visibility, intelligence, and iteration. 

The Anatomy of Charge Success

At Clockwork, we think about this as closed-loop reliability - a continuous process of detection, diagnosis, action, and learning.

Here’s how it looks in practice:

• When a charger goes offline, Clockwork’s system detects an OCPP timeout or WebSocket closure beyond a threshold, then narrows the probable cause - whether it’s a modem firmware bug, a site design issue, or a utility outage. Depending on the scenario, the platform can reboot remotely, trigger a firmware update, or dispatch a technician with all context preloaded.

• If the system spots a pattern of failed authorizations, it analyzes API behavior, card reader logs, and backend data. The next best actions might be a software patch, a firmware update, or a payment integration redesign - each linked to its detection signature.

• A utilization drop might trigger pattern-based analytics that flag cut cables or non-responsive HMIs - automatically generating work orders with supporting data, photos and instructions for the field techs.

• Even subtle signals - like frequent reboots, low-energy sessions, or timestamp inconsistencies between systems - are early indicators that something’s off in configuration, firmware, or grid conditions.

Each detection is more than a fault alert - it’s an opportunity to get feedback and continuously refine the system’s understanding of your network.

What’s Next

In this upcoming series, we’ll go deep on each detection domain - from connectivity and faults to pattern-based analytics and system-level insights.

We’ll explore the hidden signals behind every reliability issue, what they tell us about the health of a charging network, and how best-in-class operators are using automation and learning systems to stay ahead.

Because reliability isn’t luck - it’s design.

And the best are already running like Clockwork.