Shaping the Mobility Transition Intelligently: Interview with Jaap Burger

Interview with Jaap Burger, Founder of Watture

For smart charging and V2G (Vehicle-to-Grid) to truly scale, they need to become the default option and become simple user experiences. How can the industry achieve this automation without making the user feel like they are losing control over their vehicle's availability?

I think transparent pricing helps a great deal here (pun intended): for example, you can show that, by default, charging is scheduled for the times when prices are lowest. At the same time, you’re also giving the user a choice, and an understanding of the consequences. For V2G, trust is even more important: I can see it making even more sense to have a service trusted by the user that oversees charging and discharging, regardless of where you charge. The challenge, therefore, is primarily how we ensure that these user-selected service providers can operate effectively everywhere – and that applies to both smart unidirectional and smart bidirectional systems. Prices (plural) are also the necessary foundation here.

With the European AFIR in swing, you have put a lot of focus on guiding local authorities. What is the single biggest misconception city planners still have when deploying public charging infrastructure regarding grid integration?

That public charging is inelastic. All too often, charging behaviour is taken for granted, whereas with the right price signals - which are currently often completely absent - and the right tools that users can rely on, it is possible to very effectively shift much of the charging demand away from peak hours. And vice versa, it can be shifted to times when, for example, there is more than enough capacity on the grid, such as in the middle of the day when there is plenty of sunshine, or during the night. Public charging is then often made even more complex by all sorts of restrictions: on charging capacity during peak hours, and on charging duration, as it is thought that this would lead to higher turnover. Both of these stand in the way of utilising flexibility, which, from a societal perspective, actually leads to lower costs. So, in my view, ‘public’ should mean ‘supporting flexibility’.

You have advocated for dynamic pricing signals so EV drivers can benefit from lower costs when renewable energy is abundant. In practice, are today's dynamic tariffs across Europe attractive enough to actually change user behavior, or do we need structural regulatory changes first?

There is often still a lack of accurate, real-time price signals from the grid to complement energy prices: those grid charges are too static. Furthermore, levies and taxes add a great deal of overhead, which obscures the underlying dynamics. When it comes to grid charges – particularly where there are many different users, such as public charging points – time-varying volumetric grid prices work better than capacity prices, which offer no incentive to the individual user. European countries still need to take steps in this area, as also recommended by the European Commission’s guidance on network tariffs.

Grid operators often default to planning physical grid expansions (more cables, larger transformers) to handle the EV boom. From your regulatory perspective, how much grid reinforcement can we actually avoid across Europe if we fully utilize smart charging?

That varies greatly depending on the grid location, but generally speaking, it can certainly delay grid reinforcement by several tens of per cent of EV share, and thus by a similar number of years. Particularly if grid use is priced to location and time to take account of long-term costs, price-driven charging can automatically avoid peak periods.

If we look ahead towards 2030, millions of EV batteries will be parked and plugged in most of the day. If Europe gets the regulatory framework right, what does your ideal vision of an EV-integrated energy system look like by the end of this decade?

Most of the charging then takes place in a smart way: a service that takes into account user preferences, logistics route planning, bus timetables, etc., ensures that these parameters - together with prices, the availability of charging points, vehicle data, etc. - are correctly processed to produce an ideal charging plan that, in aggregate, remains flexible in real time. This creates space for exceptions: once in a while, for example, charging in a non-smart way. And sometimes, smart charging involves bidirectional charging: feeding electricity back into the grid or making space at a depot for the vehicles that need to charge at that particular moment. But perhaps less so than expected: not every vehicle undergoes a charge and discharge cycle every day, but the mere availability is enough. That is why charging infrastructure must also become ubiquitous, hand in hand with falling costs and more streamlined processes.