Bidirectional Charging in Commercial Fleets: From Barriers to Solutions
Where does bidirectional charging in commercial settings stand today?
The technical feasibility of uni- and bidirectional charging has been proven – including in a commercial context. In the Bid-E-V project, vehicles, charging infrastructure, energy management, and communication standards such as ISO 15118-20 and OCPP 2.1 were successfully brought together in a shared system architecture and tested in a real-world field trial at a commercial site. The results show that bidirectional charging is fundamentally feasible and can provide additional flexibility for both the site and the energy system.
Scaling it up, however, is by no means a given. The greatest barriers currently lie not in basic technical feasibility, but in the market, regulation, and standardization. Open questions remain in particular around metering and billing concepts, the balancing treatment of energy volumes, remuneration mechanisms for flexibility, and the regulatory treatment of feed-in from vehicle batteries. On top of this, cross-manufacturer plug-and-play is not yet a reality, and the limited availability of bidirectional-capable hardware is slowing implementation.
Where do we want to go?
Bidirectional charging expands the role of commercial electric vehicles from pure consumers to flexible, temporarily usable storage units within the energy system. For this potential to become broadly usable, bidirectional charging must be understood not as an isolated vehicle function, but as part of an integrated site and energy system – as the interface between mobility planning, site optimization, and the energy-economic use of flexibility.
Within Bid-E-V, we therefore first examined which systemic and operational benefits actually emerge under real conditions and how they can be embedded into site, grid, and market processes. Building on this, the practical barriers were identified and categorized into technical, market/regulatory, grid and infrastructure, and site-related dimensions. The aim is a shared understanding of which course must be set for a holistic market ramp-up that combines technology, infrastructure, and regulation.
What insights have we gained?
The report distills the barriers made visible during the project into five concrete recommendations, each addressing a central stakeholder:
- create investment-secure framework conditions for SMEs
- provide targeted funding for bidirectional charging systems during market ramp-up
- make conformity and interoperability testing binding and comprehensive
- accelerate the market availability of standard-compliant hardware
- strengthen implementation know-how and qualification.
The key prerequisites for scaling prove to be investment-secure regulatory conditions, standardized metering and billing processes, and interoperable, market-available system solutions. Hands-on demonstrations under real conditions, better hardware availability, and targeted support offerings for companies can accelerate the market ramp-up. Precisely because commercial sites differ substantially in grid connection, existing infrastructure, load profile, PV generation, and fleet deployment, transferable implementation pathways are needed that reach beyond individual lighthouse projects.
