Our statement on the reform of the Electricity Market Design
Electricity Market Design
The Platform for electromobility urges ambitious adoption of EMD reform to drive grid-friendly e-mobility
The Platform for electromobility, uniting industries, civil society organisations and cities from the transport, energy and clean tech sector, welcomes the Electricity Market Reform (EMD) proposal as an important opportunity to support the build-out of grid-friendly e-mobility across Europe. We appreciate the proposals improve the existing electricity market framework in a way that facilitates cost-effective deployment of individual or aggregated smart and bidirectional electric vehicles (EVs) charging. As the EV market is growing rapidly, smart and bidirectional charging will quickly become one of the most important sources of demand-side flexibility. In the collective European effort to decrease fossil gas imports, EV charging flexibility will be instrumental to reduce consumer costs, greenhouse gas emissions and better integrate solar and wind in the grid. Importantly, by offering additional revenues or cost saving opportunities to EV owners, the reform accelerates EV take-up and the clean transport transition.
The Platform therefore urges co-legislators to keep the level of ambition and a swift adoption. The European Commission’s EMD reform proposal supports the uptake of e-mobility in the following ways:
The reform recognises EVs as flexibility resource
Member States will have to make a detailed assessment of the needs and the potential of demand-side response and storage. Based on the assessment, an indicative objective shall be set and supportive measures, such as a flexibility support scheme, may be introduced. It is important to properly include EVs as a source of demand response and storage in both the assessment of the flexibility needs and the objective for demand response and storage, and ensure appropriate participation of EV stakeholders in these assessments processes.
The reform further supports the participation of EVs in the markets
The threshold for participation in the day ahead and intraday markets get lowered to 100 kW, which makes them more accessible to aggregations of EV fleets. This will help develop the market for user-centric smart and bidirectional charging services. It may be advisable to extend this lower threshold also to capacity markets.
The reform accelerates planning for EV charging infrastructure
Transmission and distribution system operators will be financially incentivized to fully consider local demand side resources, such as EVs, when looking for solutions for grid congestion. System operators will propose further transparency and proactivity on their planning for connecting EV charging infrastructure, for example by sharing hosting capacity available for EV charging. This is essential information for providers of EV charging services and helps accelerate grid-efficient build-out of EV charging infrastructure.
