⚡ V2G in Europe - what's the hold up?

Happy Monday and Happy New Year! This is Electric Avenue. The only e-Mobility newsletter that has a little bit of a kick to it - like a spicy margarita with the salt rim 🇲🇽🍹.

Here’s what we have for you today:

• 1 Poll: AFIR vs NEVI 📊

• E-mobility Hot Jobs 🌶️

• V2G in Europe - what's the hold up? ⚡

• 3 Links 🔗

• Meme of the week 🤡

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Let's dive in!

1 Poll: Charger Reservation 📊

In our last post of 2023 ⚡ Battle of the abbreviations - AFIR vs NEVI we asked y’all to vote which charging infrastructure framework is better. Here are the results:

✅ 59% voted for the European AFIR framework! 

This might be slightly biased, as we currently assume that ~60% of our readership is also EU-based. This assumption is further supported by the results of our Football vs. Soccer poll:

One of our readers wrote on this: “Football is the basis, the roots of teamsports. Everything else came later, even American Football. So Football it is!”

Well said. Thanks for sharing your votes!

E-mobility Hot Jobs 🌶️

New year. New you. New job??

Well,l if you are looking for that next gig to ride the wave of e-mobility 🌊 - no need to get out your Surfline app, you’ve come to the right spot 🏄‍♂️. The conditions are great, grab your board and jump in…

Once again, we’ve gathered the hottest EV, charging & energy jobs we could find. These can be at corporates or startups, but they all have one thing in common: they’re so🔥that we’re almost tempted to apply ourselves…

Here ya go with hot jobs in the 🇪🇺:

• Technical Product Manager Charging Hardware - eMobility, E.ON, Essen, Germany

• Product specialist – Battery Energy Storage Systems, Milence, Netherlands

• Leiter Produktmanagement Battery & Charging, Volkswagen Group Services GmbH, Germany

• Engineering Manager Smart Charging, EVBox, Netherlands

• Product Owner Charging Solutions, Traton, Sweden

• Group Product Leader – e-Mobility / DC chargers, Schneider Electric, Germany

• Product Manager Public Charging, Volvo Cars, Sweden

• Electric Vehicle Charging Engineer, EVPassport, Barcelona, Spain

• Director of Product, EVA Global, Munich, Germany

• Roaming Partnership Manager, Electra, Paris, FR or Brussels, BE

• Product Manager Wireless EV Charging Stations, Siemens, Munich, DE

… and the 🇺🇸:

• Product Engineer, Charging Software, Tesla - Palo Alto, CA

• Senior System Design Engineer - PCBA, Freewire, Newark, CA

• EV Systems Engineer, EVGo, El Segundo, CA

• Sr. Software Developer - Backend, Electrify America, Remote, US

• Senior Manager, Product Management, Chargepoint, Campbell, CA

• Station Software Engineering Manager, Volta, San Francisco or New York.

• Utility Sales Director, Optiwatt, San Francisco, CA

• Sr Digital Group Product Manager, EDF Renewables, Remote, USA

• Product Manager - EV Connected Services, KIA, Irvine, CA

• Interconnection Research & Operations Manager, Ford, Detroit, MI

• Head of DCFC, Wallbox Chargers, Mountain View, CA

• Manager, Business Development & Energy Solutions Deployment, Nissan, Franklin, TN, USA

• Head of EV Charging Software Product Management and Customer Success, Siemens, Remote, USA

⚡ V2G in Europe - what's the hold up?

Every time charging geeks hear the phrase “bidirectional charging” their heart rate increases. Of course we here at Electric Avenue get excited too and our head starts spinning around all the potential that can be unlocked with Vehicle-2-X (Vehicle to everything😍).

In December, smartEn, a European industry association for smart and renewable energy, presented its latest report on V2X enablers and barriers: “Assessment of the regulatory framework of bidirectional EV charging in Europe”. To save y’all some time we summarized the key findings from the report below. We also added some thoughts based on the conversations we had at the launch event in Brussels:

📋 Key Policy and Market Recommendations by smartEn:

1. Remove double taxation of stored energy: Today, electricity is taxed twice during bidirectional charging: Once going into the vehicle batter - and once coming out. SmartEn asks EU regulators to remove this double taxation of stored electricity.

2. Implement existing EU legislation that promotes V2X:

   • Dynamic electricity and grid tariffs that stimulate electricity consumers to maximize the use of renewables and minimize grid constraints.

   • Create open access to wholesale energy and grid balance markets with suitable market rules (e.g. metering requirements and minimum bid size) for aggregators.

   • Require distribution system operators (DSOs) to procure flexibility in competitive markets where consumers are rewarded for providing V2X services.

   • Accelerate rollout of smart meters, whilst also allowing the use of dedicated metering devices and sub-meters, to unlock flexibility. Today the rollout of smart meters varies wildly across Europe - with e.g. Germany being a laggard at just 1% penetration.

3. Mandate bidirectional charging in certain public fleets and buildings with renewables: Introduce mandates for bidirectional charging for publicly owned fleets with long-duration parking and at buildings with renewable energy sources (e.g. solar) on-site.

4. Support development of V2X: V2X must be able to participate in the same mechanisms that are open to other technologies (e.g. stationary battery storage). These include capacity renumeration mechanisms (CRMs) and specific tendering and subsidies (e.g. flexibility support schemes via the Net-Zero Industrial Act).

Additional findings and recommendations from the study:

• Why is there a need? ⚡️💚: Variable renewable energy sources (VRES - mostly wind and solar) market share has a direct influence on the importance of V2X technologies to be applied to stabilize the energy market by providing flexibility from EVs. For example, Norway has a share of 99% of renewable energy resources, but it is mostly stable and controllable with only 10% VRES. In contrast, Germany has 33% of VRES and thereby requires much more demand-side flexibility and storage capacity (page 22). To give you some numbers - 2021: 153 TWh → 2030: 362 TWh for daily flexibility is needed in the energy system.

• Policy Status 🚦: No European country fulfills the study’s criteria for a suitable V2X policy that allows the deployment of bidirectional charging beyond pure pilots (page 23). Most importantly, the double taxation for recharged energy which was previously discharged to provide V2G service makes business cases very difficult (page 25).

• Energy & Network Tariffs 📉: Furthermore, the study suggests that commercialization of V2X charging requires time-of-use (ToU) dynamic energy tariffs, and dynamic network tariffs, to incentivize demand shifts by consumers based on price signals (page 26). Notably, those tariffs only work properly when smart meters are in place!

• Vehicle-to-Grid 🪫: Currently, large attention is given to storage technologies, mostly large-scale grid batteries. However, the current deployment plans will not meet the market’s needs (page 9). Therefore, the study recommends enabling markets access to aggregated consumer flexibility via vehicle-to-grid (V2G) and that DSOs procure flexibility in competitive markets (page 40).

• Vehicle-to-Home 🏠 🔄 🚗: There are no dedicated regulations for off-grid power storage including vehicle-to-home (V2H) besides regular electrical safety standards (page 34). While V2H is more relevant in the US which deals with regular network outages in some regions, the participants of the panel did not foresee a fast technology adoption in the V2H use case because of the missing need in the EU.

• Smart Charging 💰: The only viable business model for harvesting from electric vehicle flexibility is V1G / smart charging. Smart charging is done by scheduling the EV’s battery recharging to times with low energy prices (requires ToU energy tariff) or temporarily pausing the charging session to reduce the load on the grid (flexibility is offered to DSOs). Smart charging is currently applied by players like ev.energy, Jedlix, TheMobilityHouse, Octopus Energy & others. Here we got to know some hard facts from Octopus. Currently, 100k vehicles are under management for smart charging in the UK. The resulting EV’s battery capacity exceeds the stationary battery storage available in the market.

• Technology AC vs. DC👩‍🔬: The industry does not consent if bidirectional charging should be based on alternative (AC) vs. direct current (DC). While DC-based setups (e.g. VW, Ford, Mercedes) with a local inverter, ease compliance with safety and network stability, there is a clear cost advantage for AC-based setups (e.g. Volvo, Renault, Tesla) - see page 13 for the difference of AC vs. DC.

3 Links 🔗

• Volvo x Starbucks☕: Another auto maker building branded charging stations in the US. This time it’s Volvo that partnered with Chargepoint (HW+SW) and Starbucks (site host) to build out a regional network in the Pacific Northwest of the USA (Link).

• Taking over the🏭: Chinese EV OEM NIO is taking its manufacturing inhouse. In the past the company used JAC - a state-owned automaker in China’s Anhui province - as its contract manufacturer. As of Dec 5th, 2023 NIO takes over both JAC plants that produced NIO-branded vehicles for a combined ~$445m USD. (Link)

• All our API belong to you🔓: Tesla’s FleetAPI now supports Powerwall, solar and Wall Connector - enabling developers of 3rd party apps in the VGI and energy space to access data and interact with these devices💪. (Link)

Most-clicked link last week: Post about Tesla’s EU Supercharger network supporting roaming with DKV and Travelcard fuel cards (Link)

Memes of the Week 🤡

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That's a wrap for this week! Let us know how you feel and leave some feedback (We read every single one of these 🙂 ):

Reader Review of the Week

Selected ⚡️⚡️⚡️⚡️⚡️ Freakin´ awesome on ⚡ Battle of the abbreviations - AFIR vs NEVI ⚔️🤺 and wrote:

“very fresh and interesting!"

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DISCLAIMER: None of this is financial or tax advice. This newsletter is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. The Electric Avenue team may hold investments in or may otherwise be affiliated with the companies discussed7