After four years of research and real-world demonstrations, the FLOW project has shown how smart and bidirectional charging technologies can help manage grid constraints, reduce charging costs and emissions, and support the growing deployment of electric vehicles. FLOW was funded under the Horizon Europe framework programme, with a total budget of around 10M€, and the consortium brought together 30 European actors working with electric mobility from a multisectoral collaborative approach.  

The project has tested different approaches to unlock the flexibility of electric vehicles, from local flexibility markets and smart charging to bidirectional charging and energy management systems. The demonstrations, carried out in different European contexts, have also highlighted the importance of user-friendly solutions, reliable forecasting and regulatory frameworks that enable flexibility services to scale.

Among the project’s demonstrations and testbeds, the Menorca demonstrator is quite unique in Europe. It showed the potential of a local flexibility market using smart charging to manage congestion in the low-voltage grid, making it particularly relevant on an island with high seasonal electricity demand. In Copenhagen, the project tested smart charging in residential and public environments, Conditional Connection Agreements and Vehicle-to-Grid interoperability. Rome demonstrated a transmission level flexibility service from residential EV drivers and also the load reduction potential of conditional connection agreements. The Prague pilot focused on energy management in commercial buildings, demonstrating how an advanced Energy Management System can coordinate EV charging, battery storage and Vehicle-to-Building capabilities. In Dublin, FLOW addressed the efficient use of shared charging infrastructure through a slot-based booking system, helping to reduce charger congestion and make better use of existing infrastructure.

IREC was the coordinator of this project, while also contributing to the technical development of the project by developing advanced tools to support the integration of EV flexibility into energy systems. Its work included a new algorithm for battery degradation, scenario-planning methodologies (specially focused for regional government decision-makers), charger hosting-capacity analysis (for DSOs) and forecasting tools to simplify decision making for drivers when charging their vehicles. These developments support different stakeholders from grid operators and charge point operators to aggregators and final users, helping them to assess how flexibility from electric vehicles and energy storage can support the grid while accounting for technical constraints, future scenarios and the impact of battery use. Josh Eichman was the leader of FLOW, and two IREC departments were involved in the innovative tasks: Energy Systems Analytics and Power Systems departments.

The FLOW results show that smart and bidirectional charging can provide valuable flexibility without compromising users’ mobility needs. This positions EV flexibility as an important tool for managing increasingly electrified and renewable-based energy systems across Europe.

Find out more in the last FLOW newsletter and final video release:

Acknowledgements: FLOW is funded by the European Union (grant agreement n. 101056730). Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.