World premiere: “V2X Suisse” successfully prequalified

World Premiere: “V2X Suisse” project successfully demonstrates the fulfillment of the Swissgrid technical prequalification requirements for ancillary services with a distributed fleet of bidirectional charging electric vehicles in a car sharing pool with CCS-Combo2 standard plugs

In June 2023, the V2X Suisse project achieved a major milestone, by aggregating the regulation-power of a distributed fleet of bidirectional charging electric vehicles (EVs) and successfully fulfilling the ancillary services technical requirements of Swissgrid, the Swiss Transmission System Operator (TSO). The services provided are Frequency Containment Reserves – FCR – (Primary Control Reserves) and automatic Frequency Restoration Reserves – aFRR – (Secondary Control Reserves). These services are used by the TSO to balance the electrical grid since the demand and production are continuously fluctuating. FCR is the first service involved in the grid stabilization process, requiring participants to react within 2 seconds of the frequency deviations. aFRR is the second step, which ensures that any power imbalances are corrected. These services help to ensure that the European Grid frequency is kept stable at 50 Hz.

The V2X Suisse project aims to demonstrate the technical feasibility and the economic potential of V2G technology to provide ancillary services through a pool of EVs. It is composed of a fleet of 50 Honda e electric vehicles, each of which is bidirectional and connected to a direct current charging station. These vehicles are distributed across 40 different locations. The V2X Suisse project consists of companies active in the electric mobility field and currently focused on developing and implementing vehicle-to-everything (V2X) technology applied to a car-sharing use case in Switzerland.

The consortium is led by the car-sharing company Mobility and includes the automotive manufacturer Honda, the software developer sun2wheel, charging station developer EVTEC, aggregator tiko, and novatlantis as a scientific adviser. The project is supported by the Swiss Federal Office of Energy (SFOE).

V2G technology enables the real-time control of EV battery charging and discharging when the EV is parked and therefore not in use to support the grid stability during periods of high demand or fluctuations in energy supply. This is done by respecting the user needs of shared EVs and guaranteeing that the vehicles are charged and ready for use when customers need them. This becomes possible through a specifically developed software platform, constantly updating the charging schedules of every single Honda e of the fleet according to multiple factors, including booking information for the following 48 hours. Unlike traditional static or dynamic load management techniques, the project deploys a load management system that timely delivers energy to EVs for approaching bookings, while also maximizing the flexibility of the other vehicles that have enough time to charge. The system operates in compliance with local grid limitations, solar self-consumption, and local over-rule signals from Distribution System Operators (DSOs).

The successful fulfillment of the ancillary services’ technical requirements of Swissgrid, is a world premiere, as it has been accomplished with a car sharing pool, without local aggregator hardware, using only cloud-to-cloud connectivity and the European plug-standard CCSCombo2. This remarkable achievement highlights the potential of this technology to support the transition to a more sustainable and resilient energy infrastructure. To gain additional insight into the project’s significance and results, representatives from the project consortium have shared their thoughts:

“We are thrilled to finally see that V2G technically works not only as a ‘grid-friendly’ solution for local DSOs or local self-consumption buildings (ZEVs), but also for the extremely demanding ‘s ystem-friendly’ ancillary services for TSOs. We are very pleased that the whole signal-chain from ‘s ignal-tiko-sun2wheel-charger-vehicle reaction’ can be achieved within 2 seconds! On a Mobilityfleet level, if we would scale the technology to our whole fleet we would achieve an enormous flexibility-power, like the power of a hydro-powerplant like Ova-Spin or Peccia!”

- Reto Meier, V2X Suisse Project leader at Mobility

“Since inception in 2012, tiko has been in the forefront in integrating the flexibility of low voltage assets in its virtual power plant, therefore integration of flexibility from EV, also in V2G, is a cornerstone of tiko’s strategy. We are pleased to have achieved this challenging technical milestone and are looking forward to further gaining valuable operational experience in the V2X Suisse project,”

- Frédéric Gastaldo, founder and CEO at tiko Energy Solutions

“The integration of electric vehicles into the energy grid and the associated linking of energy and mobility services is an important development component for Honda. With the Honda e, we have a correspondingly attractive vehicle to explore the possible added value for the customer. The V2X Suisse project also offers the opportunity to test the opening of new business fields in practice. The fulfillment of the technical prequalification requirements in collaboration with the project participants is a correspondingly large and important milestone on this path,”

- Martin Stadie, Energy & Digital System Research at Honda R&D Europe

“We are delighted to have contributed to the success of V2X-Suisse with our user-centric approach to load-management systems under tight requirements of the pre-qualification rules. V2X-Suisse allowed us to advance our Fleet-management-Software with flexibility management and built-in V2X functionality. As a small start-up, we are looking forward to further support this unique consortium of innovators with our platform,”

- Sandro Schopfer, Co-Founder and CTO at sun2wheel

Furthermore, Serge Wisselmann, head of ancillary services & analytics at Swissgrid, offered his perspective on the successful completion of the project’s first phase:

“The V2X Suisse project demonstrates that V2G technology with the CCS standard can contribute to grid stability by participating in ancillary services. Swissgrid is very interested in diversifying technologies and strives to open to them fairly the possibility to participate in the ancillary services market. According to the latest studies, the installed power from EV in Switzerland is expected to be in the range of 3.5GW by 2030¹. Hence, EVs will play an important role in the grid stability in the close future.“

- Serge Wisselmann, head of ancillary services & analytics at Swissgrid