Energy & Industry

Rise of electric vehicles, fall of the power grid?

The smooth integration of electric mobility into the power grid is the next frontier on the path toward clean mobility. The Platform for Electromobility issued a 15-solutions strong recommendations paper to ensure a smooth integration. Charles Esser highlighes here some key points and invites you to join the debate with key transport manufacturers.

Our recommendationsJoin the debate

Electric Vehicles are “battery-on-wheels”. What does that mean? With the right policy framework, smart charging can smoothen the impact of EVs on the grid.

But what’s more, the millions on new electrified vehicles in Europe can actually be used as assets to support the grid when it is under stress with Vehicle-to-Grid technologies.

We recently published with other members of the Platform, a roadmap of 15 solutions for a smooth integration of e-mobility into the grid. I won’t cover them all here but would like to underline one point:

One of the main challenges in planning the electrical grid in a way that can absorb charging of EVs lies in the uncertainty about how different types of EVs will recharge in different places.

The key to success here is early communication, coordination and collaboration between stakeholders: this includes the DSOs that we represent, but also local authorities, charge point operators, energy companies, fleet managers and so on.

While the Platform for Electromobility helps us get closer to each other, we call on European authorities to initiate, moderate and formalize this collaboration.

In a few weeks at the European Sustainable Energy Week in Brussels, I will be discussing all this from the point of view of European industries at our EUSEW session on 11 June in the late afternoon.

We gathered major European clean transport manufacturers across different modes to understand how upcoming European energy policies can help them be at the same time more competitive, more sustainable with a minimum, or maybe even positive, impact on the power grid.

Make sure to join us! You’ll find the registration link under this video. See you there!