Re: [ocpp] Re: Old OCPP 2.0 RC2 Time Zones description

[Anders Darander <anders@chargestorm.se>]

Hi,

* Robert de Leeuw <robert.de.leeuw@ihomer.nl> [161108 10:15]:
> Thanks for you input, yes, a timezone should be a setting configured in the
> charge point.

> I'm a bit in doubt about using time/zones with names/abbreviations:

> "There exists no international standard that specifies abbreviations for
> civil time zones like CET, EST, etc. and sometimes the same abbreviation is
> even used for two very different time zones. In addition, politicians enjoy
> modifying the rules for civil time zones, especially for daylight saving
> times, every few years, so the only really reliable way of describing a
> local time zone is to specify numerically the difference of local time to
> UTC. Better use directly UTC as your only time zone where this is possible
> and then you do not have to worry about time zones and daylight saving time
> changes at all."


Well, that's quite likely true...

I'm not aware of full ISO-standard for this either.

The TZ is normally speciefied in one of two formats:

Either: 

(this is closer to the Posix style):
Etc/UTC
Etc/GMT0
Etc/GMT-1 (and in this case the sign is reversed...)

Or (Olson format)

Australia/Sydney
Canada/Atlantic
Europe/Berlin
US/Eastern

Allowing all time zones of the Olson format might take up some space...
At the same time, this allows a more fine grained control, if it's
necessary... Obviously, there's really no need for a CP to have the
whole world, unless you expect to sell it worldwide.

But sure, the offset, dst-offset, dst-starttime, and dst-stoptime should
be sufficient. Though it might make it slightly less userfriendly if you
have a local configuration interface.

Cheers,
Anders

-- 
Anders Darander		Senior System Architect
ChargeStorm AB		Tel: +46 702 44 84 36
Hospitalsgatan 3	E-mail: anders@chargestorm.se
602 27 Norrköping	Web: www.chargestorm.se