08/01/2023
The first webinar of the "SCALE Summer Sessions" took place on Thursday, July 6 (15:00-16:00 CET) and focused on the "Smart Charging Ecosystem: Who is Who? What are the drivers and barriers?"
The webinar was hosted by POLIS and moderated by Edwin Bestebreurtje of FIER Sustainable Mobility, an expert in the field of charging infrastructure and a key member of the consortium.
Marisca Zweistra of ElaadNL, the coordinating organization of the SCALE project and co-author of the stakeholder analysis, presented the main findings of the publication and research, which revealed an extensive list of stakeholders and key players in the smart charging ecosystem. Afterwards, Frank Geerts (ElaadNL) and Willem Christiaens (FIER Sustainable Mobility) participated in a panel discussion.
The key findings and discussion points:
Start with users, as creating a user-centric smart charging system that takes their needs into account is essential for them to accept smart charging protocols and incentives. E-vehicles represent a great opportunity for users to participate in electricity markets, and they should be able to easily respond to pricing and sustainable incentives.
Everyone needs to be on board, and they are highly interconnected: Regulators and public agencies, knowledge partners, distribution and transmission system operators, flexibility service providers, OEMs.... they all play a role, and their needs, challenges, processes and tasks are interconnected. Smart and V2X charging requires robust collaboration across the value chain (or it just won't happen): It's really an ecosystem!
The availability of data is key to managing and deploying smart charging (e.g., knowing when vehicles are charging, what the battery state of charge is, how many vehicles are charging, how drivers are responding, etc.). Drivers already have access to some of this data, but they don't have the processes or incentives to share it with the charging system.
A European regulatory framework would (really) help create interoperable and common protocols for smart charging and develop a common understanding across all member states of what is and falls under smart charging and V2X.
Vendors and aggregators are struggling to take smart charging a step further. There have been many pilots, findings, research and tests that have proven the value of smart charging. However, it is difficult to find a fair balance between flexibility and compensation. Users, OEMs, CPOs and other stakeholders must all have incentives to participate in smart charging and V2X markets.
It will take many electric vehicles to make a difference. A large number of e-vehicles is needed to develop flexible markets and ensure that the e-mobility sector can support the grid, which is not yet the case in Europe. At the same time, the grids are already overloaded. Understanding and deploying smart charging systems needs to start now, but the pilot projects are still relatively small and do not have much impact. It's a chicken-and-egg problem: legislators aren't making significant progress on congestion management, and as a result, OEMs aren't really interested in smart charging and V2X.
Pilots are important to bring stakeholders together, and SCALE is doing just that! SCALE has 13 pilots in 7 European contexts with a consortium of 29 partners representing the entire smart charging and V2X value chain. They are testing a range of energy services including behind-the-meter optimization, grid-related services, congestion management, etc. Through the pilot projects, the consortium identifies problems in the deployment of smart charging systems and finds solutions. For example:
The use cases require extensive data sharing, and each stakeholder has a component of these data sets. The ecosystem must be well consolidated for this exchange, which is based on existing protocols, to occur. However, these protocols are inadequate (e.g., for communication between the vehicle, the charging station, and the CPO). New standards are essential (e.g., ISO 15118-20 and the latest OCPP), but they require a lot of work and development efforts from all stakeholders. In terms of regulation, SCALE use cases have encountered grid compliance challenges: Any generator that injects electricity into the grid must meet standards that are unique to each country. However, with smart charging, vehicles can travel between different countries, and they must be able to comply with the different grid regulations. This is a recognized regulatory gap in grid regulations.
65 people attended the webinar and had the opportunity to participate in lively discussions. A full recording of the webinar can be found on SCALE's YouTube channel by clicking on this link. ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l5U-vjD633s )
If you would like to learn more about the work presented in this webinar, please visit our Resources section where you can find our Stakeholder Analysis (https://scale-horizon.eu/?jet_download=5684) and Executive Summary ( https://scale-horizon.eu/?jet_download=5732 ) to read.
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