Vehicle-to-grid (V2G) integration – Development of national incentivising framework for the integration of Electric Vehicles as home / building energy storage, in energy communities and in national grids

The specific project awarded in the framework of this call shall have a substantial support to policy development and legislative implementation on Vehicle-to-Grid integration leading to:

• Identifying Dos (Best practices) and Dons (barriers to a smooth integration) in V2G legislation and regulations across Member States, in order to showcase the best options and to mainstream them throughout the EU support tools;
• Increasing awareness across Member States and Stakeholders on such practices;
• highlighting the legislative / non-legislative needs to support energy systems integration as called by the EC strategy on it, as well as the smooth deployment of the mobility service providers market;
• Provide grounds for further standardisation / mainstreaming in the framework of the Sustainable Transport Forum / implementation of AFIR/EPBD.

These actions shall ultimately contribute significantly to peak-shaving and to decouple electric power generation from fossil fuels.

Applicants are expected to define, calculate, explain and achieve the expected impacts as described in the Award criterion ‘Impact’

Based on article 11 of the LIFE Regulation 2021/783, the LIFE Multi Annual Work Programme 2021-2024, includes the possibility to finance each year a limited number of projects designed to support specific needs for the development and implementation of Union environment policy and legislation. Once a year, in consultation with Member States, the Commission makes an inventory of the specific needs regarding the development and implementation of Union environmental or climate policy and legislation that need to be addressed during the following years and identifies among them the needs that could be addressed by specific projects.

Specific project:

The proposed project should develop and check the feasibility of legislation/support schemes enabling the use of EV batteries (when connected) as home batteries / to feed energy communities – and removing any potential administrative barrier (including to their authorisation), when plugged in with smart plugs at home / in collective residential buildings / @work / roadside “slow” charging points. The project shall include a dissemination exercise for public authorities across Member States.

Specific need addressed:

In quantitative terms EV battery storage is notable relevant as:

1) Cars are parked about 95% of the time – most of this time EVs can be plugged-in.

2) EVs batteries are relatively big, also compared to home batteries (to make a comparison, a standard Power wall is 9 to 18 kWH, an EV battery typically 75 kWH, up to 100 kWh (with city cars around 50 kWh) – a large potential for storage – and for smart charging; as IEA recalls, we will need a huge amount of diffused and concentrated energy storage to decarbonise energy – and EVs will be a large contributor (with thermal energy stored in highly-insulated tanks via Heat Pumps, this is the major source of demand flexibility); we are all evolving not only to prosumers, but to actors in a real-time pricing market, where electricity can be extremely cheap when lots of renewables are producing and no thermal power plant Is running, to very expensive in peaks.

3) We already supported – at corporate fleet level, through the Innovation Fund, “Virtual Power Plants” constituted by fleets managed by an energy aggregator.

Still, the absence of an incentivising legislative framework might entail administrative barriers and red tape preventing this potential to be exploited.