EV charging market: players and interactions

Even though the emerging EV charging market builds on top of the existing energy industry, new market agents are able to take roles very different from the traditional ones.

This article provides an overview of the players and their interactions in this new world. It should be noted that the overview is a simplification — the real world differs significantly between geographic regions. Generally EV charging market players can be divided into two groups: old and new.

Old players include energy market entities:

• Transmission system operators (TSO), who are responsible for national electricity transmission grids;
• Distribution system operators (DSO), who are responsible for local electricity distribution grids;
• Suppliers, who sell energy to final customers; and
• End-customers, who purchase electricity.

Three new roles in the EV charging market

1. The first new agents are EV owners, who own electric cars and charge them with electricity bought either from a supplier or an EV operator (definition below). When vehicle-to-grid (V2G) technologies become relevant, EV owners could also become suppliers of electricity.
2. The second new agents are operators, who sell electricity to EV owners through a variety of charging points. The difference between an operator and a traditional supplier is that the contracts with operators are not location based. EV owners need the freedom to move around a geographic area and thus need to be able to access multiple charging points as a customer of the same operator. In the future operators can also aggregate EV’s and charging points, and play a key role in selling V2G services to the old energy market agents.
3. The third new agents are charging point owners (CPO), who install and manage charging points on their own property. A CPO buys electricity from a supplier and uses it itself or resells it to EV owners through the charging points under a commercial agreement. This commercial agreement is typically arranged via an operator.

Four scenarios for a CPO include a residential customer charging privately at home; an office building offering charging semi-publicly to its employees; a commercial building offering charging semi-publicly to its clients; and an organization offering public charging with several charging points.

Virta provides solutions for all new roles

Our services enable any company to take one or several roles in the ecosystem through the modular solutions. You can register to be our EV driver customer and charge all around Europe, purchase a few charging stations and became a charging point owner or build up a charging network and manage your own customers and stations with our platform services.

In addition, for companies wanting to start selling or using vehicle-to-grid and other energy services, we're already working on the most advanced solutions. This side will truly revolutionize the EV charging industry — in the future, transportation and energy sectors support each other.

Can we help you get started? 

If you have any questions about launching your own EV charging business, we're happy to help! Just reach out to us and we'll get back to you.