Renault ZOE allowed to provide advanced grid balancing capacity in Netherlands

Jedlix and ElaadNL announce that the Renault ZOE can be deployed for reserve and regulation capacity of Tennet to balance the electricity grid in the Netherlands.

To prevent power outages, national electricity grids have to be in balance between production and consumption at any time. Whenever this balance is disrupted, which can happen unexpectedly, Transport System Operators (TSOs) activate secondary reserve capacity, or automatic Frequency Restoration Reserve (aFRR), to prevent imbalance. To respond to these changes in a timely manner, this capacity usually comes from fossil power plants. This creates dependency on these plants as back-up and often leads to an increase in CO2 emissions.

In 2017, Jedlix and Elaad demonstrated that Tesla cars could balance the Dutch national electricity grid based on real time signals. Now they have tested succesfully that the Renault ZOE is also qualified to provide flexibility services to TenneT, through over the air connection and control of the Renault ZOE. The eligibility of this European best seller is another evidence that EV batteries can be efficient and competitive distributed resources to contribute to the increasing flexibility demand of national grids and to the European Energy Transition.

Jedlix Smart Charging platform aggregates Electric Vehicles fleets in its Virtual Power Plant to provide balancing services to grid operators in Europe. With this experimental framework in the Netherlands, TenneT clearly leads the way in the harmonisation effort of balancing services initiated by eight TSOs from five European countries with the ENTSO-E Picasso project.

Prerequisite for using the Renault ZOE to balance the grid was that the charging process can respond to real-time signals, thanks to Renault ZOE connectivity. The comprehensive Test Centre of ElaadNL in Arnhem helped to verify that the ZOE cars were indeed able to respond within few seconds to signals of Dutch TSO TenneT and to deliver committed energy blocks reliably over the required period of time to make an impact as secondary control reserve.

Jedlix CEO Serge Subiron declares: “The qualification of Renault ZOEs to TenneT secondary reserve market is another significant milestone to demonstrate that EVs represent an opportunity for providing new balancing services to electric grids at scale. We are also proud to work with the great team of ElaadNL in the testing of mobile Distributed Energy Resources and the smart charging industry”.

ElaadNL Director Onoph Caron states: “Testing is essential in the qualification process of electric vehicles and it is great to see our Test Centre playing a vital role here. In a previous research together with Jedlix we also noted a positive effect on the distribution grid when responding to transmission grid signals, something crucial for EV adoption on the long term. We invite all OEMs to run similar programs here in the Netherlands.”

Since 2018 Jedlix offers the flexibility of the charging process of connected cars as secondary control reserve with Dutch TSO TenneT. This way, Jedlix creates extra value with Smart Charging on top and independent of the partnerships they have already established with several energy suppliers. Electric car drivers who use Jedlix Smart Charging can benefit for this by earning up to a couple hundred euros each year. In the Netherlands, Renault ZOE drivers can benefit from the Smart Charging capability through Renault Z.E. Smart Charge application.