Towards market driven regulation with EV charging

EV charging enables groundbreaking demand response and energy storage solutions. However, ambitious regulation is needed to ensure that the potential is realized.

In January Virta’s CBO Elias Pöyry shared his views on EV charging regulation to European regulators at an event hosted by Florence School of Regulation. He sees that EV charging regulation opens a window of opportunity to take a giant leap in electricity demand response services and in the management of energy reserves.

However, he argues that the implementation of various regulations needs to be ambitious enough to unleash this potential. Firstly we need to support intelligent charging solutions so that the energy solutions would be technically possible. Secondly we need unbundling within the sector to ensure a competitive market.

Intelligent charging is the prequisite for energy solutions

As a foundation for all energy solutions associated with electric vehicles we need intelligent infrastructure. Regulation plays an important role in guiding the market to the right direction, for example by allocating subsidies to intelligent solutions.

Intelligent infrastructure is built from three parts. Firstly we need standardized plugs with real time communication between the car and the charging point, for example the IEC62196 standard Type 2 Mode 3 connector.

Secondly we need real time communication between the charing point and the charging operator. This is not standardized yet (ISO 15118 as the future standard), but OCPP, OICP and OCPi are de facto standards.

Thirdly the operator needs capabilities for real-time management of the charging event. In practice the operator needs to be able to adjust the charging power up and down without interrupting the charging event.

Open and competitive market calls for unbundling

To ensure an open and thus competitive EV charging market unbundling within the sector is needed. In practice this means that the end user should have the freedom to choose the charging operator, the operator of demand response services and the charging energy provider as defined in the AFI directive (2014/94/EU). The freedom of choice requires intelligent charging infrastructure.

In addition limitations or boundaries between public and private charging should not be set. EV charging should be a market driven activity and networks should be built on market terms. This means that public charging is commercial charging. There can be public charging in private areas, as well as private charging in public areas. Hence the decision whether a charging point is private or public should be up to the charging point owner.