Eurelectric has launched a series of Roundtables dedicated to increasing the visibility of DSOs viewpoints and perspectives on the issues pertaining to the whole E-Mobility ecosystem, reuniting the relevant stakeholders and identifying the bottlenecks pertaining to the deployment of E-Mobility in relation to the distribution grids.
Introduction
The third Roundtable was dedicated to challenges and opportunities to make grids greener and more flexible. It was preceded by a survey where participants could provide valuable input for the discussions. The roundtable was focusing on three main technologies: smart charging and V2G. This roundtable touches upon both public and private charging infrastructure.
In our previous roundtable, we discussed and advocated for the use of flexibility solutions as a way to alleviate congestion by harvesting demand-side flexibility through optimised EV Smart charging and Demand Side Flexibility. Roundtable members analysed these solutions, highlighting the role that smart (uni-directional) charging and V2G (bi-directional charging) may help in tackling congestion in both public and private charging. While smart charging might be considered a technological prerequisite to any V2G solution, we define V2G solutions as technologies that enable the Electric Vehicles and/or the load infrastructure to deliver active and/or reactive power flow (or any other system services) to the grid. Smart charging, on the other hand, first and foremost describes a situation where (active) power is being taken off the grid (in a smarter way) and/or distributed to less congested periods of the day. For each technology, roundtable members examined its current state of play, the existing definitions, the state of applicable legislation, the benefits brought by these technologies, and the key enablers and bottlenecks of these technologies.