Organising tenders for public EV charging infrastructure is a key tool for public authorities – national, regional and local – to shape the EV charging network needed to enable their citizens to switch to electric private or shared cars and vans.
As part of the European Commission’s Sustainable Transport Forum sub-group on best practices by public authorities to support the deployment of charging infrastructure, we’ve produced this new updated guide.
Getting EV charging right – both in terms of planned locations and the ability of users to charge flexibly – is a key objective for public authorities, especially as grids increasingly appear to be a bottleneck in the wider energy transition. Concession agreements can be used as a tool to channel and direct (future) charging demand to areas with sufficient capacity or where grid upgrades are feasible or planned. Passing on dynamic energy prices and the benefits of DSO-led local flexibility programmes to end users will not only reduce their bills, but also deliver wider societal benefits – a key reason to get it right.
(For more on this topic, also see https://www.watture.eu/portfolio/report-how-to-develop-smart-ev-charging-infrastructure-a-guide-for-public-authorities/)
Using concessions as a tool, public authorities can ensure that public EV charging takes place in locations:
⚡ where grid capacity is available
👐 expanding access and improve accessibility
☀️ can be co-hosted with renewable energy generation
🚃 align with multimodal transit, parking vision
As EVs mature, public charging network deployment may progress through stages: one after another:
📍 Strategic
🕸️ Coverage-based
📈 Usage-based
Ensuring that chargers facilitate the ability of users to integrate their electric vehicles into the energy system (AFIR, Article 15.3) is another aspect that public authorities can address in a tender. Similarly, these tender requirements should include requirements for energy efficiency, modularity and upgradeability to extend the technical life of the charging infrastructure.
Public authorities can also speed up the roll-out of public charging and reduce costs for all parties involved by coordinating with their local DSO at all stages. By forecasting and properly modelling (flexible) EV charging demand, the necessary (anticipatory) investments can be made as needed. Pre-approval and pre-application for grid connections before / during a tendering process can significantly speed up the actual deployment by selected charging point operators. One-step approaches, where the grounding and other civil works for the grid connection by the DSO, the installation of the charging point by the operator and the right parking / signage by the public authority are all combined in one go, are a proven way to save time and the scarce resource of skilled labour needed in the energy transition.