Ep. 29: Davide De Michino, Speaker of the Grid Integration & Energy Focus Group at CharIN - V2G, Grid Codes and the Future of E‑Mobility

Transcript

Cleaned up from a machine transcript. Translations are machine-generated and may contain errors.

Welcome to the Smart Charge by RiDERgy podcast. This is Claudio Geyken, founder and CEO of RiDERgy. This is your show to learn about all things energy management and smart charging innovation for electric vehicles and fleets.
Welcome back to Smart Charge. Today we're talking with David Demichino, who is in Rome. He's a speaker of CharIN's Grid Integration Energy Focus Group and works for Enel X Way. The big Italian utility. We dive straight into the how of vehicle-grid integration, turning charging sessions into flexibility - from peak shaving and time shifting to ancillary services - and what really works today with V1G versus what still needs to happen for V2G, or bidirectional charging. We unpack dynamic tariffs, small asset aggregation, and why PV plus storage plus smart
charging belongs in one playbook. A big chunk is interoperability: the role of CCS and ISO 15118, the North American connector shift, and CharIN's push for global harmonization, including messy real-world challenges in Latin America where mixed imports fragment the market. If you care about making chargers part of the power system, not just power outlets, this one connects policies, standards and products into a single working stack. Plug in. Hello David, how are you today? Fine, thank you. Hi Claudio, good that you made it. You are
in Rome, or where do I find you today? Yeah, in Rome, in Rome. That's where you're also based, mostly, right? Yes, normally, yes. OK. Then, before we jump into detailed EV topics and energy topics, so that the listeners understand who they are listening to, can you introduce yourself, give a bit of background, and yeah, how you arrived at the role where you are today? Yes, sure. So I'm David Demichino. Currently I'm the global head of product management and energy services at Enel X. I also have different roles - like today I'm participating on behalf of CharIN. I'm the speaker of the Grid Integration Energy Focus Group, but I'm also the e-mobility chair inside the Smart Tian Association. My arrival at Enel and at CharIN - OK, it was another revolution. I joined Enel in 2006, so it's almost 20 years that I've been part of the Enel group, yes - very loyal - with different roles.
I would say a good portion of this time I spent inside what we call global trading, which is the unit responsible for the operation and trading of our power plants in terms of generation - trading meaning on energy markets. So intraday, ancillary services. More or less 10 years I was involved in that kind of business. Then I moved into the retail part of Enel, following the smart home product - first the Italian one, then Enel X was built. So I
moved to Enel X to follow smart home at a global level. Then in 2020 I moved to mobility, first as a senior product manager in what we call energy services - that was our fancy name for vehicle-grid integration services - then I took responsibility for that part, then I took responsibility for the whole mobility product at Enel X, and recently also other products. So more or less I follow the beyond-commodity solutions, including mobility for both B2C and B2B, and
other solutions for B2B like energy monitoring, PV storage, and what we call small asset flexibility. Then naturally I joined - I became speaker of the Grid Integration and Energy Focus Group in CharIN. That happened when I took charge of the energy services part in mobility. My previous boss had left that position, so it was natural for Enel to put me forward as a candidate in CharIN for this role. So it's more or less 2 or 3 years that I've helped
to drive this group, which is all about vehicle-grid integration - both from a connection point of view, but also from a flexibility services point of view: V1G, vehicle-to-grid, etc. Well, quite a broad scope of expertise that you have - that's quite unique. And so maybe as a question that listeners might wonder: are you more interested in the e-mobility aspects, more of a mobility person, or more an energy person? Or would you say you like both fields equally?
So as I explained, my background - I would say my DNA is energy. But naturally I'm also becoming a mobility person, meaning that over the years I needed to enter and understand - I don't want to say the automotive sector, maybe that's too ambitious - but at least to understand what mobility is, and also how e-mobility is changing the automotive role in the entire industry. And
not only energy, because it's a revolution for us as a utility, but also for the automotive sector - and maybe an even bigger revolution there than in the utility space. Yes, for sure, both spaces are being revolutionized and then they come and merge together. And what's your vision related to those two spaces? You've been around for quite some time, so you've seen the evolution and you're probably also closely monitoring long-term trends.
Are there trends, is there a vision you believe will happen in the energy space and the mobility space? OK, for sure. I have two worlds that are, day by day, talking more. I would say when I joined to follow the mobility side, I saw two industries that were connected but not talking together. Now, essentially due to regulation but also due to the opportunity in terms of flexibility that the vehicle can give to the grids, they are
converging. When I joined to follow the mobility things, I saw two industries that I would say were connected but not talking together. Now, essentially due to regulation but also due to the opportunity in terms of flexibility that the vehicle can give to the grids, they are
I would say industries that are working together. I don't want to say that they are collaborating, but they are working together because both have the same goal. Also, day by day it seems that they will also compete a little bit - the two industries that didn't touch each other. So maybe not now, but there are different examples of that. Automotive, you know, is trying to enter the energy space. Obviously it's a natural migration
since EVs, so I think that in the future they will compete a little bit with us. We, as a utility, can see this as an incumbent on our space - obviously it's at a very early stage, but yes. And do you think, in terms of the energy space, will it be renewables mostly and a bit of batteries? Is there maybe nuclear? Do you have views related to where we are heading? And
then the mobility space - is it going to be all electric, and are there going to be exceptions here and there? Do you have any beliefs there? Let's respond step by step. So regarding energy, yeah, renewables for sure. I don't think that anyone will change their mind on that. We are inside this revolution, so I don't think anything will change. Nuclear is different. Nuclear is also being placed inside the renewable technology category. So that for sure will have a role
in the future. How big - I would say that depends also on the technology evolution. There are different things happening in the nuclear space. I'm not an expert on that, but there are different technologies under development that can change, you know, not only the perception of nuclear, but also its value inside the generation fleet in a specific country. Inside mobility, yeah, that's a little bit interesting. Passenger vehicles - sure, no matter what, they will
be battery vehicles, so there is no doubt on that. It's only a question of time. A couple of years ago I would have said only maybe hydrogen on heavy-duty vehicles will have space. To be honest, seeing the automotive space and the main truck manufacturers, it seems clear that it would also be battery-driven for heavy-duty vehicles. I think where the decision has not been taken is marine. I think battery can have a role, but let's see. So there are
different examples in Norway, like ferries, that are a reality - electrified. But long-haul cargo, let's see. Not yet - I think that will be challenging to do with batteries. So maybe hydrogen can take a part of this mix. Then aerospace, I don't know. I would say I'm not a big expert. I saw some research projects about battery-powered airplanes that are in the first phase. Let's see. I don't know, to be honest.
It's something really at the early stage. Maybe hydrogen can also play a little bit of a role on that - who knows, yeah. And in terms of more day-to-day topics, how can we imagine - what are the topics that are mostly on your mind, that you're dealing with most? As a well-known reference person in this space, I think there are a couple of technical points and a couple of regulatory points that are usual
on our table. One is all the new amendments of the grid codes in terms of connection of physical assets to the electricity grid. There are the demand connection requirements and the requests for generators - those are the two main dossiers under amendment, and the whole industry has been working on them for maybe two years now. This will change a lot of things, especially for the role of generators, where they are putting specific requirements on vehicle-to-grid, the vehicle
and the charger. That's for sure one of the main topics from a regulatory point of view. There is also - it's not touching CharIN currently, but I think it will in the future - the demand response network code, which is the new network code that will drive the technical specifications on how demand response services need to be provided. There is a specific part on submetering - I don't remember exactly how they call it - dedicated measurement device, DMD if I remember correctly.
This will also open a lot of opportunities because it gives the capability to do submetering, to do flexibility, managing performance only on the dedicated device. So you can play with flexibility just with the charger, but not with the entire building or the entire room. That would be a game changer as soon as it becomes applicable. I don't want to touch other things that are happening on the regulatory side that also affect mobility. There is the Data Act. There is the
regulation that also covers the new requirements for automotive to share data - the SOC essentially, which is one of the most important data points. In terms of technical topics, obviously we are still working on vehicle-to-grid solutions, or as we call it in CharIN, bidirectional charging. While now we are seeing more and more commercial pilots - let's call it that way - on DC, we need to push a little bit more on AC bidirectional charging. There is more value for the
end customer in passenger vehicles, essentially due to the lower cost of the charger. There is also something we are working on regarding battery degradation. When we do bidirectional charging, there is a little bit of - I would say - misleading information in the industry, not from automotive, that's a good point, but from other industries, suggesting that batteries can reduce their health if we do bidirectional charging. So they go to X, they go to B - that's where you want to go.
So as charging, we are working to have a publication on that. I would say that that's the main point on the table, yes, correct. And maybe one step back before we dive into some of these topics in more detail: what is CharIN? Can you give some background as well, and how it was created? Yeah, so CharIN is the international association that promotes the charging standard, like CCS or any standardization. It's an association that
was born quite a few years ago, which is quite normal in the industry, and it merged essentially at the beginning automotive and charger manufacturers, but now it's a little bit bigger and also has utilities inside, also DSOs. I would say it's an association that puts together different industries in the same place, talking mobility, talking about e-mobility. I would say it's organized in different working groups. The one I'm speaking for - I'm the speaker - is the grid integration and energy
group, which is mainly focused on grid integration in each form, as I said before, talking about the grid, the physical connection, but also about the services. While there are other groups more technical about the charger connection, the communication protocols. It's a group of experts that promotes standardization in the industry. In addition, obviously CharIN is well known in Brussels, meaning that the regulatory office in Brussels - I would say - has a good voice and
Help a lot in terms of advocacy for all the companies that are representing. Yes, that's more or less what CharIN did in terms of advocacy. Then I have all the what they call "Plugfest" events to put together technologies to test in advance. That's an event that, yes, also only members can join. Obviously it's not a free event, but it's an interesting event since they have these two or three events per year in Europe,
two or three in the US, etc. So I would say it's an interesting opportunity for people that have technology to test, because you find automotive, you find charger manufacturers, you can test together with different brands. That's nice. And CharIN - is it the main standard? I think it's well known for CCS. I think that's also the key standard that CharIN is pushing. To what extent is CCS and ISO 15118 pushed by CharIN, and where
does CharIN stop? I understand - I mean CharIN is not the - yeah, CharIN is not the regulatory body. It's not ISO or a standardization body. It's an association of industry players that promotes standardization. So obviously we are for CCS, we are for ISO 15118-20, etc. We just promote the standardization and the interoperability of technology. Obviously the different people that are inside CharIN are the ones that are also sometimes at the table of
The regulatory bodies, yes, like ISO, etc. So the scope of activities is both on the DC side with CCS, and mostly - I understand - CHAdeMO would be out of scope, right? CHAdeMO is promoted by another association, the CHAdeMO association, and it seems like it is coming to an end. I know in the past they were working to merge together, also with the new Chinese standard, but I don't have a lot
of information on it, so let's see. Now I would say Europe - this is clear - yes. In the US there is now the famous story of the Tesla connector, the North America connector, and I would say it is still not clear what the future holds. It was a big bang when they announced it, because all the automotive manufacturers day by day announced that they are moving to the North America charging connector. Let's see - I still see CPOs that
are rolling with CCS1, so it's not clear if CCS1 is dead. It seems so, but it's still not clear. That's a little bit of a mess, and it is not good for the user, for the consumer, because when there is uncertainty around standards, it also slows down the adoption of the technology - in this case, e-mobility. Also Latin America is still under discussion, while in Chile we can say this is true,
Other countries are not the same. And also CharIN is working a lot - I would say in the latest year - to advocate for the standardization in Latin America, because there are some countries, the majority, the main one is Brazil, that I would say have a Chinese effect, so they have a lot of EVs imported cars that create a mess on the market. And so CharIN is working to promote the CCS2 as the main standard.
Other countries - no, this is good - other countries are still a mess, meaning that at the end of the day, in Europe we are lucky, because we have CCS2. There are no rumors on that. We have rumors on other things, but not on the basic technology, while in the other countries they are still at the first step of electric mobility - you know, what is the standard that they need to adopt - while in Europe we are past these conversations.
Close. Makes sense. And on AC though, honestly I'm not sure how many AC standards there are out there. I think there's the American Type 1, it's called, right? Then there's Type 2 in Europe. And CharIN is focusing on the Type 2 as well, right? Meaning CharIN is focusing also now on North America's charging connector, meaning that it is not promoting one specific standard, it's promoting the standardization of CCS2.
was pushed, and then CCS1, because it seems that was the standard. Honestly, I think the story is similar. We will have Type 2 in Europe, it seems, and the North American connector in the US - that's from a physical point of view. From a communication point of view, I would say it seems that at least on that side we will have the same, so ISO 15118-2, and ISO 15118-20 seems that it would be the standard. That's
good, because at least in terms of languages we will talk the same language. Yeah, got it. And in the world of standards that you are involved in - you already mentioned a few, like grid codes - are there other big standards that are very relevant to charging? I'm also thinking inductive charging, for example, or anything related to V2G. I would say, yeah, in terms of inductive charging, I'm not the one that
is following this, but there are conversations about that. ISO 15118-20 also supports wireless charging - whether that will happen, I don't know. I just see the robot taxi from Tesla; that will have this. It's one of the technologies that, you know, whether we scale or not - way more, I think, yeah, you're right. In terms of the ones that I follow: the grid code is one of the most important ones, because
it is impacting a lot. ISO 15118-20 is also, as I said, the main one, also because there are now different regulations that are pushing on 20. There are new delegated acts from AFIR that also mandate 20 from 2027, also in private charging. So that will also be impacting, because 20 brings a different technology complexity and cost to operate. And now we have this IEC 61851 - that's the pulse-width modulation, the current
PWM one - that is the historical one on AC. I would say it is the main, essentially analogue protocol, because they don't exchange any information. It is the one that, at the end of the day, drives AC charging processes all over the world. Now the bet is that it seems the push is for 20 also on AC, also private. That would be a challenging transition - I would say it will require years - because it's the charger that needs to
speak 20, but also the vehicle, and automotive is not a super fast industry to adopt things. It is a complex industry, very regulated, so it will take years. So we are now seeing 20 on DC vehicles, but on AC there are different other complexities. 20 still requires some amendments that are ongoing. So it's a complex standard, a complex ecosystem, also because again we have different standards that need to coexist. We have standards from automotive, we have
standard from energy, etc. - and this is not simplifying things either. And I think you're in the best position. There are many people that wonder: we're talking a lot about V2G and bidirectional charging since many, many years. And I think at this point this conversation also crystallizes a little bit why it's not coming. And maybe you can also share your thoughts on why this complex environment - since the term V2G was coined in 1997
by a Delaware professor. And so it's been a while; the idea has been around, but we're still just seeing very recent announcements and pilots, and still no real commercial, big scale. So what's your view? Why does it take so long? What's the complexity there? And when will it come at scale? Maybe for those that also listened to other talks I had in the past, I will repeat a little bit.
I think that as an industry, we created a bubble some years ago, when there were essentially, in Europe, two cars: the Renault Zoe and the Nissan Leaf. The Leaf had CHAdeMO, and CHAdeMO from the beginning had bidirectional capability. So - I bought one - not surprisingly, essentially all the industry said, "Oh guys, we have a huge opportunity; we will deploy all the cars with bidirectional capability," and that set the stage. At that period also different pilot projects started to kick off
for us, obviously. The fact that the vehicle is not just a vehicle but can become a battery on wheels - even for the non-expert - was information that started to sink in. But then something happened: CHAdeMO more or less died. CCS was entering in force, and at the beginning CCS had no capability for bidirectional charging. So we needed to wait for the entire standardization process to arrive at a point where, at least from a
technology point of view, you can do it in an interoperable way. So I think that the last 3 or 4 years the whole industry was a little bit on standby, because we were waiting for something - waiting for ISO 15118, waiting for data sharing, etc. Now, last year we said 2026 will be the year. I think that is now true: 2026 will be the year where we will start to have commercial solutions.
Renault started last year with the Renault 5 - obviously it's a closed ecosystem; you need to buy everything from Renault. I would say that's a good start because at the end it's a commercial pilot, not something that needs to scale right now, so it's good. There is also Octopus Energy in the UK together with BYD and Zaptech - also a closed ecosystem, but at the end something that is moving forward in the UK. And then
There was last week a presentation on the new BMW iX3 that also has a DC bidirectional capability, and they are selling also the charger. The owner in Germany announced together with BMW the offer. That's good because it seems that it is not a closed ecosystem yet - reading a little bit of articles and text suggests it will not be a closed ecosystem. That's good because this is what we need to arrive at an interoperable V2G. Mercedes
is also launching the new electric GLC, which seems to have bidirectional capability. So, meaning 2026 will be significant. Also, Volvo is launching the EX60 with a bidirectional capability, also the EX90 if I remember correctly. So also meaning that premium car brands are starting to do something more massively. Renault also, in what I would say is the entry-level segment - the Renault 5, Renault 4, and it seems also the Mégane - these cars are now bidirectional, meaning the industry is moving on. I think next year will be the
year where we can start to have solutions, customers will start to try, and I expect we will have a lot of learnings, because that will be the year of, I would say, big pilots - not hundreds, but we're talking tens of thousands - so the whole industry will have learnings. You want to add something? No, I was going to ask: just to understand, how does the standardization process work? You said that CHAdeMO had this
bidirectional thing. It was because of Fukushima that the Japanese - because CHAdeMO comes from Japan - had built it faster than we had in Europe with CCS. Nevertheless, it seems it's not without challenges. It would take years and years to get it going, but maybe from the outside, from the naive perspective of the EV driver, can you just explain - given that you are so closely involved with standardization processes, with grid codes, and with ISO 15118 where the car
communicates with the charger - where is it, what is taking so much time? Where is the big workload, so to say? I would say that to make V2X services live, a lot of ingredients are needed. Because you need first to have the technology - vehicle and charger. As I said before, it has been a couple of years since V2G was officially defined and it still requires some amendments. And to develop a car normally requires a new platform, so a proper
new automotive platform normally takes around 8 years, something like that - a lot of years. So that's the timing, while charger manufacturers are a little bit faster, automotive will not be. So that's the first thing to know. You have only the technology, then you need to put this technology in the field. This means the charger needs to be connected to the grid. And to be connected to the grid, a V2G charger needs to
be considered as a generator. And it's not like connecting a TV or a dishwasher - a generator needs proper safety requirements, I would say. To simplify: the safety regulations to be connected depend, usually, country by country, sometimes also DSO by DSO. And you live in Germany, you know, a country where there are - if I remember correctly - 800, 4,000... but it gets complex. That's a problem, because for
an industry player, you need to certify devices or cars for different markets or submarkets. That's the complexity. Then you just buy an EV, buy a charger, and connect to the grid. Then you need to do something with this energy - you want to inject it, but what do you need to do? So you need a service provider that needs to do this. While it's natural to think that the service provider can be the utility or can be the automotive, it's not
always the same. It can also be a third party that needs to communicate with the charger, that needs to receive some data from the automotive part, but they need to extract the value from this flexibility, from this energy. So you need to operate on the market, or maybe just inside the utility in terms of balanced portfolio, etc. So that's the complexity. There are a lot of different ingredients, each one is complex, and sometimes the ingredients need to touch a different industry.
A majority of these industries are heavily regulated, like automotive, like utility, etc. So that's why it's not so simple to arrive at something that is working properly and also is interoperable, meaning that I can change operator as I did with the electricity contract. It's something that is not only a contract - it's something that requires a digital communication between parties, so it requires standards, etc. So a lot of things need to happen from different levels of the value
chain. I think that was a very good explanation. Thank you for that. And you already gave some examples - do you think now, once '26 arrives, there will be a quick scaling, potential exponential scale? And is there, for example, also a path to retrofit some of the hardware, AC hardware that has been installed, so that AC chargers - not everything needs to be replaced in terms of infrastructure - and it's going to be cheap enough, attractive enough so that the
value that is unleashed through this potential can be taken advantage of? The transition will be slow, because there is no possibility to retrofit. If the vehicle charger was not designed to have the bidirectional capability and the -20, it's not possible to retrofit. And the -20, as I said before, has some technical requirements that require specific technology. I will simplify, but it's not like taking one - I will send over the update and
This work, it's not the case. So obviously I did not expect a faster scale of this, or maybe a faster scale, yes, but on new sales, there will be no retrofit opportunity. I would say no, that would not be the case of V2G.
Then, in terms of will it make sense from an economic perspective, that depends on the customer segment versus technology. While currently we can say that V2G is a technology matter on DC, DC doesn't make a lot of sense on the passenger vehicle, not least because the DC charger will cost €2,000. So to have €2,000 of earnings from V2G, I would say you will require some years. So this is why all the industries are pushing
to have AC. But on AC, the technology from a regulatory point of view is not settled. We still need, as an industry, to solve some problems, essentially also on the grid connection regulation. But this will be the game changer, and this is why, at the end, Octopus and BYD and Zaptec had a proprietary solution that is not proprietary, but it's not leveraging the standard. Because when I see there is still no
de facto standard, not an approved standard. But this is where we can scale. So as I said, I don't think that next year will be the year of scale, the year of thousands, tens of thousands of V2G users. We will have a lot of learnings. But I think the standardization will be closed next year, though obviously you need to adapt. So I think we still
need a couple of years before we can arrive at a moment when we can, as an industry, scale this seriously, meaning that every car will be V2G, every new user will have a bidirectional charger, etc. And obviously the European Commission, but also member states, can have a lot of voice in terms of incentives or other policies to speed this up. Makes sense, yeah. And just to understand, physically
speaking, from a first principles perspective, there's a big debate between DC and AC bidirectional charging. Why is AC so much cheaper? Is it because the components in the vehicles scale more, so there's simply more scale at the vehicle side if you put the bidirectional inverter there? No, let's remove another bias of the industry. It is not V2G that makes the vehicle or the charger more expensive than V1G.
It's because in the past, to do V2G with CHAdeMO you needed DC, and naturally a DC charger has an internal converter to transform AC to DC, and that has a cost. That's the component that changed everything. So if you can leverage the onboard charger, the converter that is on board your vehicle, obviously you can buy a cheap AC charger that will still have a little bit of extra cost for V2G, essentially for the components that, as I said before,
have some technology specifications that are a little bit more expensive. But meaning that from a low-level technology point of view, there is not a big difference between one-directional charging and bidirectional charging. It's all the other things that need to work to make it happen that increase the cost a little bit. But the cost of DC is simply because you have a converter in DC, so you need to pay a converter cost that is at the
end an inverter, and it's expensive. This is why you have the BMW V2G charger at €2,000 or €1,800 something like that, while the Renault charger is maybe also around €2,000 with installation and everything. Meaning that it is another scale of the offer, essentially for that reason. Yeah, makes sense. And do you cooperate with other standardization committees - like there's the IEA that has Task 53, or different ones - that
are trying to align with them? Yeah, meaning that CharIN obviously is a historical association that collaborates with different ones. I would say the latest big collaboration is with the IEA Task 53, which is this new group of experts promoting interoperability of V2G - meaning that you can move the vehicle between chargers, between DSOs, and everything will work. As CharIN, we are set up in a framework to collaborate because of our
DNA to have interoperable solutions. CharIN is usually inside other groups where it's possible to have association participation, because in some groups association participation is not allowed. For example, CharIN is in the Sustainable Transport Forum, which is the group in the European Commission, in DG MOVE, that deals with mobility. So yes, CharIN is at the end the unique association for
that, and there are no other associations on the vertical of e-mobility. Makes sense. And beyond that, we talked a lot about bidirectional charging and V2G, which, as we discussed, is not the opportunity right now but it's coming. So vehicle-grid integration topics - there are already quite a few that are relevant today. What are the ones you're looking into mostly? Is it the DSO services, or is it more for the energy markets aspects, or more for, for example, balancing services? And that
It depends, and that's strictly connected to how the electricity market is designed for a specific country. While there is a general European approach in terms of electricity market, I would say state by state this changes a lot. There are different countries that are doing different things. While implicit flexibility - meaning, to simplify for those who are not inside this, meaning playing a little bit with the electricity price, speculating a little bit -
for V2G, meaning that I can discharge when the price is high and use this energy to power my home or my buildings, my business building, and charge when the electricity price is low - the real value comes more from providing ancillary services, meaning providing flexibility services to a utility or a DSO. That's when the value can be a little bit more interesting. In addition, the real big value is that if you can stack this - if you can
try to stack implicit value with, for example, a DSO program - that's a third value that in some countries, depending on regulation, you can stack, and that's where for the user it will start to become interesting. Maybe on B2C, yes, meaning that at the end I have one EV and one charger. But let's think about big fleets that can have thousands of vehicles to charge every day. Or let's think about heavy-duty vehicles or trucks that will
have a megawatt-hour battery per single vehicle. That's where the value will become interesting in any case, because we are talking about incredible energy exchange. So that's more or less the value. Obviously, TSO is a more mature market because ancillary services on the TSO side are, I would say, one of the core DNA elements of the modern electricity market. The DSO market is something newer across the European Union. There are different countries that have a different
maturity level. I would say the flexibility market is still developing, but there are good examples and not-so-good examples. Greece, I would say, is complex - it's very locational. All the small-asset flexibility, including V2G, makes sense when you can aggregate. This means that you need to aggregate thousands of assets to make something interesting, while DSO services are sometimes based on substation aggregation per meter, which sometimes
is very, very small, so you don't have liquidity. You cannot aggregate 1,000 users; you can aggregate 10, but that you cannot manage properly. So that's why DSOs are not yet mature enough. There are different pilots in the Nordic countries, and there have been some pilots running for about a year now in Italy. France also has some DSO pilots up and running, but still I would say it's an early stage. Yeah, makes sense. And then you already hinted
on the level of maturity, and one speculation as well is that the more mature markets, like the balancing services, are less liquid or there's less potential, and eventually now with all the batteries coming and more and more EVs participating, they would also saturate quickly. And then the spot markets have more liquidity and therefore would be long-term more attractive, and the DSO market is indeed still to be determined as it's so immature, right?
So, would you agree with that? That depends on who is managing this. If you think about a big, vertically integrated utility that has generation, distribution, transmission, and also retail and wholesale - yes, there is enough liquidity, but these are not the peanuts that are changing positions on the wholesale market. Intraday will become a little bit more interesting in terms of price spikes; you can play a little bit. But the real money, as I said, is
in ancillary services. Why ancillary services? Because the majority of these markets have a capacity payment. If you offer capacity, you receive - normally - some interesting euro amount per year, and this is where the majority of value is. Then you also have value when you need to operate the asset - you need to charge or discharge the vehicle, if we are talking about a bidirectional vehicle. But that is where there is the
the fixed part of this. Then there is liquidity, meaning that obviously now it's just peanuts, but in the future we need to understand how these technologies will compete with power plants and utility-scale batteries. Will they be more competitive? Because at the end of the day, a V2G asset is bought by the user for another purpose - I bought my EV to move, and then I can do flexibility, so I don't need to recover the investment of the EV with the flexibility, maybe, or
maybe not, because the user is more price-sensitive, so they will behave as if: if you are not giving me some hundreds of euros per year, I don't want to do anything - I'll just charge my car and use it to move. So maybe utility-scale assets can have a role. No one knows this, to be honest; in the industry it's still a question mark. Yeah, it's a very open question. I think you cannot run a study at massive scale. It's
the time will tell, once you try to sell it, whether people are willing to sacrifice the availability of the vehicle for the value they get, right? That's what your point was, right? That is a question of awareness and the trust of the user. I think we will have more and more well-aware users that understand the concept of doing it, that trust the partner that is selling the ser - the
services, so to start this transition, but we require years, yeah. And I'm sure you also have an opinion on that. I mean, we're talking on a very high level and I think that's sort of also our bubble. We are aware of these opportunities, but indeed it's a challenge as well to transmit and educate the market and have the end user engage with the opportunities if they're not aware, right? That's a big challenge as well. Yeah, that's the main
challenge, and also you have different sub-challenges because saying "users" is too generic. You have a residential user that has some challenges. You have the fleet manager of a last-mile delivery company that has other challenges, other perceptions of that kind of services. You have a facility manager of big offices that needs to provide the charging services to the employees, with other needs and other awareness, or maybe expectations of the services. You can have a public transportation company with
electric buses that have other things. So it's complex also for that - different customer segments. You cannot manage them in the same way. You need different things and different value propositions for each segment. And you have the privilege - I think this is the first time we have a guest from Italy on the podcast. So definitely we need to talk a little bit about Italy too. What's your view of the Italian market in terms of electrification of
mobility, compared to other markets that you observe, and what might be some surprising facts for the international audience as well? Meaning that we are not the first country in a European graph of electrification - the market share of electric vehicles is still very small. While we have advantages on public charging infrastructure, where we have a lot of public charging points, this is obviously also the effort from Enel but also from
a lot of companies in recent years, so we have a really competitive market in terms of CPOs. From a charging point of view, I would say Italy is one of the well-positioned countries. In terms of EV adoption, as I said before, we still have to grow. Last month I saw some reports showing very promising numbers in terms of new EV sales, so that's a promising sign. Still, there
are some waves of incentives opening soon in Italy, not for all citizens, but for specific citizens and specific businesses. So let's see - I would say I have good feelings about the future on that. I think what is happening in Italy now is just a question of whether we want to speed up, from a political point of view, from an incentives point of view or not. I think that now we are a little bit luckier than
some countries were some years ago, because we have a lot of entry-level EVs that were not available back then. So there is not only, I would say, the pure Chinese company BYD that is selling a lot now, but also low entry-level cars from well-known automotive brands - there is Renault with an interesting car, there is now Citroën releasing an entry-level car, there is Fiat - so there are a lot of opportunities also for, I would say, a
customer who is not the executive of a big company, but is a normal citizen starting to have this journey in the EV ecosystem. There are a lot of opportunities, and even more in the future because I've seen some automotive announcements coming. So, as we said at the beginning, I think that the future is electric for all passenger vehicles, also in Italy. Yeah, totally. Well, we had a guest here -
maybe you know him, Electric Felix, who is traveling around Europe. He was charging in Italy and then in Spain, and he mentioned that it was a shame that in Italy the prices were so high compared to Spain as a CPO. Do you have an explanation for that, and do you think it will get cheaper so that people would be even more incentivized to switch to EVs? And
that's one of the problems that we always have in Italy - we have high energy costs in general, not only for EVs. That's due to some specific taxes that we have on energy, but also the tariff regulation was structured in a way that makes it high. And also in terms of electricity generation, our marginal technology is sometimes still coal or gas. We don't have nuclear in Italy.
So the base load in the past was always coal. Now it's green, OK, but in the past, no. And also now there is a huge debate in Europe about the system marginal price of the market, which maybe is not reflecting the current European power plant generation and status. But that's the fact. So currently the electricity price is high in Italy in general, not only
for EVs - everywhere. The ones who can charge at home don't have a big problem because you can pay less than €0.20 per kilowatt-hour, which is very, very low, no problems. But on public charging, and especially on high-power chargers, the price is starting to become close to €1. Now it's a little bit lower in recent months - €0.60, €0.80, depending on the CPO, depending on the MSP. But yes, it's a factor - in Italy the electricity is, I would say,
It's more expensive compared to other countries essentially, but it's not for EV or for particular taxes on EV charging - it's in general for the electricity structure that is based in Italy. And do you think there's a trend to spot tariffs or dynamic tariffs, both for private but also for public chargers, that this could be an opportunity for enabling people to charge when it's cheap, when there is abundant green energy? That's a big
debate in the entire industry now, because in the past everyone was pushing: "We need dynamic rates, we need dynamic rates on everything. We need a dynamic rate on energy, a dynamic rate on grid tariff, we need dynamic rates on everything." Then mature markets, like the UK, started to understand: maybe we are overcomplicating the life of a normal customer. And then other forms - I would say more mature forms - were born, what the industry calls "time of use" tariffs.
When you have a specific tariff - very, very discounted compared to the normal price - just for the specific appliances that you can control remotely, and for which the customer gives consent: the customer gives the utility or the service provider consent to control, for example, the EV charger. In exchange for this control, which means the utility will optimise the charging process automatically, you get a highly discounted rate on the charging process.
Dynamic rates still seem, now, much more common just in the Nordics, because of the maturity of the services that were available there. In other countries, let's see - there are some obligations, or rather suggestions, from the European Commission to have dynamic rates, but it's not common to have them in all member states. Customers also want to be more certain of the electricity price they pay, and are not
well aware of this mechanism. So it's again, as I said before, a mechanism of awareness that we need to build. But maybe now we have more creative solutions, like time of use, rather than dynamic rates, which put a little bit of risk on the utility, but from a customer point of view are easier to understand and safer. Makes sense. And you said there are a few things on
your mind, like the Data Act, which just entered into force a few days ago, if I'm correct. Well, yeah, Friday. So timely topic. Yeah, so - we're recording on September 15th - what's your take on that? To what extent is it really a game changer? Will data access and data pricing change a lot? What's your take? Obviously now it's just the beginning.
For sure, for the ones that are inside this industry, that actually is a bomb. It's a bomb because it changes a lot of things. It says that every service, every device that sends some data on the cloud - so what we call IoT devices or services - those data are property of the user. But that's also in the past; it needs to be accessible in real time to the customer or by a third party authorized by the customer. That means that
this can open a lot of opportunities for service providers that want to provide additional services on that data. And also, the second point opens the wave of interoperability of the services. Maybe I have a dishwasher that sends the data on one cloud and I want to migrate the dishwasher to another cloud - that needs to be mandated. Obviously it's a big bang. One of my colleagues who follows the regulators always says that act is like the GDPR for non-personal data. That's the big
bang. For the ones that were there when GDPR came into force, it was a mess - big changes in everything: in the contracts, in the websites, and everything. That act is the same, but it's even bigger because it covers all the other data: usage data, and a lot of - I would say there are huge data flows that need to be regulated, need to be shared. Everyone needs to adapt their systems, etc. So it's for sure, I think, just
the beginning, taking force on 12 September, but I think we will need years to have a proper deployment in the entire industry - industries, I would say, because the data is cross-industry. For sure, it's an opportunity for startups and service providers that want to build additional, innovative services on data. And as a startup myself, one of the things that is also left unclear is: is there
a cost involved, right? For this data to be managed - be it cloud services, storage, or transmission of this data. Obviously the one that has managed the data - taking one example - is the vehicle OEMs. They will have costs, and it is unclear how they will have to price this data access. That's one other point the industry is talking about, because that act says that to
the user you will provide it for free, but to third parties - meaning B2B players that want to deliver B2B2C services - you can also ask for money. It's not clear how much. It seems that the European Commission will release a paper or some FAQ about how big this cost can be and how it should be calculated. But on automotive, when we talk about some data, there is also the red line that says that SOC - meaning level of battery - and SOH - status of health, meaning how much energy can I
charge, I will simplify, and the GPS and the location when appropriate need to be shared for free. So no one knows how this will work in the future. I recently wrote a post on LinkedIn about that, suggesting a possible model. There's a well-known model in digital services that is the freemium model. Maybe automotive will open some services, also B2B2C services for free, just delivering some simple data mandatory from the regulation, and maybe more premium services will ask for money. Let's see, just
at the beginning. And the industry is a lot to take in, it's a complex thing. Yeah, no, that's a very interesting point, and time will tell how it will develop. You also mentioned LinkedIn - you always post interesting stuff there. I can also recommend following you. And one of the things you said is EVs, chargers, aggregators, utilities, and grid operators must speak the same language. That means not just ISO 15118-20 and OCPP, but also flexibility-oriented protocols like OpenADR, IEEE
2030.5, and unfortunately many others. These enable real-time coordination, forecasting, and dispatch. Can you elaborate on what your feeling was when you posted that, and what was your sense - what did you want to let people know? My feeling - and I don't think it's only mine - is that it's a mess, as we said before. The charger and the vehicle is just
one part of the complex ecosystem that we need to build to make V2G happen. There are a lot of additional things that need to be standardised. I mentioned, for example, communication between the flexibility provider and the flexibility services operator - the DSO or whoever will be involved. That connection is still missing. There is OpenADR, which seems to be becoming a de facto standard maybe, but it's still not officially so. As I say, it's a little
bit of a mess because there are a lot of things that need to happen. We need to connect the entire end-to-end. Each party needs to communicate with the others, and for each part you need one protocol, and sometimes it's not standardised, so there are a lot of things to do. There is the Coalition of the Willing on Bidirectional
Charging, which is one of the industry groups promoted by the German Ministry of Economy and Climate Action, launched two years ago, where they decided to bring all European industry together to understand what we need to do to make bidirectional charging a reality. One of the deliverables from that - which everyone can download for free - is exactly this: if we look at the end-to-end of vehicle-to-grid, what do we need in terms of data, communication, protocols, etc.
If you download the report, you understand that it's a mess - not a mess, but there are a lot of things that need to happen, and a lot of data created by different bodies that need to be exchanged. And that's why, just to reconnect to what I said before, the first services we are seeing on the market are services that are completely - I would say Apple-style, you know - like Renault: you need to buy everything from Renault; BYD with Octopus: you need
to buy everything in the same package. This simplifies the service because they have full control of everything, of all the data. It's very easy to develop, very easy to maintain, very easy to test, while interoperability is obviously more challenging. Yeah, and I think this complexity - that's also the intention behind the European Commission sandbox proposal. I think you had also hinted at that, and you think it's going to
be very useful to have more of these very large-scale sandboxes. Is that something that is still just a line item in the automotive action plan? Let's see - we need member states to implement a voluntary V2G sandbox at European level. Different ones are working on that, me too, together with the European Commission, to understand what it means to have a sandbox. But my
concern is that it is voluntary. Each member state needs to decide whether they want to have one or not. So I expect a very fragmented deployment of this. But let's see - there are different meetings in the coming months on that. We will see. Makes sense. As we are coming towards the end, looking again into the future, what are the trends or innovations that you are particularly excited about, be it in the mobility
space or be it in the energy space?
Well, for sure V2G is one of them - it will be a game changer no matter what. So it's something that, if someone is listening and doesn't know about it, you need to keep an eye on it, also in terms of investments in this industry, because it will be a game changer for the entire world. We will have a
huge battery capacity available, idle, for a lot of hours - a huge opportunity for the industry. You mentioned AI. Obviously I think everyone is looking at AI, including those who are just using ChatGPT or something like that. It's something that will change everything. In the energy sector - which is still not a very fast-moving industry - it's still at the beginning, but I expect disruption in processes and innovation, but
In terms of trading and all this kind of stuff, up to now technology just helped a human operator to do something. I think that this will change a lot of things in terms of the energy sector. And then, as I said before, heavy duty vehicle electrification will be something to take a look at, because it will be huge. It's not only about trucks.
It's about heavy duty vehicles. It's about agricultural vehicles. It's about waste management vehicles. It's part of mining - we have a dedicated task force on mining just because they want to electrify that part of the process, to still have a supply chain component for the green battery. So heavy duty vehicles will be a really, really huge topic in the entire industry, and for those who are interested, take a look at that, because it will be a game
changer. I also find it fascinating with these massive vehicles and the capacity they need to repower sometimes. So what is a last message that you would have for the listeners, and how can people reach out to you? I would say two things. CharIN is a very interesting organization with a lot of experts, so if you want to join, please visit the CharIN website. If you want to reach me,
you can find me on LinkedIn. Sometimes you also find me at public events, so it's very easy to contact me and reach me. To close, I think that V2G will be a revolution. It requires a lot of things and we're just at the beginning. I think that all of industry, consumers, regulatory bodies, and standardization bodies will embrace this revolution, because it will be a real game changer for electrification and for
becoming a greener and more sustainable society. I can't wait for that to happen. Thanks for sharing your expertise with us, David, and I wish you lots of success in your work - hopefully we'll meet soon. There were lots of topics we couldn't cover, but maybe there will be another chance. Have a good rest of the day. Thank you, Claudio. Thank you, bye. Bye. This was David Demichino from CharIN's Grid Integration Group. Quick takeaways: V1G
now, V2G later. Time shifting and peak shaving scale today. V2G needs clearer rules and AC economics. Value stack: real money in TSO ancillary and DSO services - local, pilot-driven; stack only when regulations allow. Tariffs simplified: handle complexity with type-of-use options while you test dynamic pricing. Interoperability is strategy: think CCS, ISO 15118 plus OCPP, and add a flex protocol - for example, OpenADR for dispatch. Then bundle it: smart charge plus PV plus storage plus EMS - one playbook, not silos. If this
helped, follow, rate and share Smart Charge by RiDERgy. See you next time.

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