Regulatory Challenges for the Provision of Ancillary Services from Electric Vehicles

With their ability to feed back the electrical energy stored in their batteries, bidirectional electric vehicles can actively contribute to making our power supply system more flexible. However, the actual utilization of the flexibility potential of mobile battery storage requires an intelligent interaction of electric vehicles, charging infrastructure and the overall energy system. In the research project “Bidirectional Charging Management—BDL” such an approach is therefore being developed and tested in a pilot operation with 50 BMW i3 on the basis of various use cases. However, in order to be able to actually fully utilize the energy system-related added value of millions of individual mobile battery storage units, not only the technical development of electric vehicles and charging infrastructure is required, but also the regulatory framework must be adapted and further developed to reflect the requirements of the new flexibility options. In this article, regulatory hurdles and possible solutions for the provision of ancillary services from electric vehicles with bidirectional charging management are shown for three exemplary vehicle-to-grid use cases. In particular, Frequency Containment Reserve as well as for congestion management redispatch services and local network services in accordance with Section 14a of the EnWG are considered.