Grid Integration of Electromobility into the Electricity Distribution Grid

Experts and politicians agree that combustion engines must be replaced by electric motors for the decarbonization of private transport and that 100% of the energy for this must be generated from renewable sources in the future. Electric mobility is locally emission-free, efficient in energy use, quiet and offers an attractive driving experience. If this consensus continues to translate into concrete action, there will be an exponential growth of electric vehicles. In the future, up to 40 million new customers will join the German power grid. Customers who, on the one hand, want to charge conveniently—i.e., with high performance and in sufficiently large quantities at all times. On the other hand, however, with 11 or 22 kW, these customers have by far the largest power requirement that we see in private households. Due to the latest funding programs, we are currently observing a sharp increase in requests for the grid connection of private charging points. In order to test the challenges for our power grid in real life, Netze BW has set up several NETZlabore (grid labs). The findings of these real life labs help us to assess which capacities our power grid provides in extreme cases and how we can use them optimally to guarantee our customers the fastest connection possible. In addition, Netze BW has defined relevant, holistic and future-oriented action points for the implementation in practice. These include the provision of a customer-centric grid connection, early detection of grid bottlenecks through transparency in the power grid, intelligent optimization of the existing power grid, and forward-looking and future-proof grid development.