The Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) was established to provide funding and support the competitiveness of renewable energy and enabling technologies in Australia. ARENA’s electric vehicle (EV) Smart Charging workstream collected data from three key smart charging trials by AGL, Origin Energy and EVGrid – a consortium of five National Electricity Market (NEM) Distributed Network Service Providers (DNSPs). The three trials assessed the impact of EVs on the electricity market and gauged the willingness of consumers to have their EV charging managed under the innovative structures developed by the trial retailers and DNSPs.  

The trials tested a number of financial incentives, including: 

• Consumption-based daily incentives: allowing customers to be paid in a $/kWh rate to voluntarily move charging behaviour into optimal hours on a fixed daily schedule

• Daily controlled (smart) charging: prioviding customers a fixed incentives per day to completely limit energy provided during peak demand hours on a fixed daily schedule

• Ad-hoc demand response: providing a financial incentive to enourage a change in customer behaviour with a moderate notice period, on an ad-hoc schedule 

Learnings from the trials aimed to allow stakeholders within the energy market to better plan for increased numbers of EVs, both at lower costs and higher levels of convenience for consumers. The effectiveness of communicating network stress and wholesale market fluctuations to EV owners is a key challenge, minimising the impact of the anticipated rapid uptake of EVs in the NEM. 

Energeia’s consulting services were contracted by ARENA to consolidate outcomes from each of the trials and provide clear results to all stakeholders on the effectiveness of the trials’ management of EV charging impacts on the grid and the levels of trial participation by consumers.Our analysis demonstrated that both controlled smart charging and price incentives resulted in a strong change in the charging pattern of consumers.