How can electric vehicles help use power grids more efficiently—without customers having to manually adjust their charging behavior? The Grids & Benefits pilot project by UnternehmerTUM, the Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship at the Technical University of Munich, provides practical answers: Dynamic grid tariffs can be an effective signal for grid-friendly behavior—if they are reliably provided in practice and integrated into automated optimization logics. The Mobility House Energy participated as an aggregator, translating grid tariff signals into concrete, automated charging decisions.
Key Results at a Glance
- Load shifting works in everyday life: Within the aggregator application, around 70% of charging sessions (corresponding to about 20% of the total energy charged) were measurably shifted to different time windows compared to a non-optimized reference case—typically away from expensive and congestion-prone periods toward lower-cost, grid-friendly hours.
- Financial benefits for customers: In the pilot, the average reduction in net grid fee costs was around 2 ct/kWh, with peak reductions of up to 10 ct/kWh—depending on grid area and timing. For EV drivers, this translates into savings of up to approximately 11.9 ct/kWh gross per charged kilowatt-hour.
- Scaling through aggregator technology: The pilot demonstrates that the key lever lies in the automated translation of grid and market signals into charging schedules. This aggregator technology makes grid-friendly charging scalable—and lays the foundation for the next step: Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G).
Why Flexible Control Has Become Crucial
As e-mobility and heat pumps continue to scale, distribution grid loads are increasing—along with the risk of local congestion. Demand-side flexibility is therefore becoming a key lever: When controllable loads such as EV charging are automatically shifted to times of available grid capacity and high renewable generation, grid pressure and congestion management needs decrease. This can help make grid investments more efficient in the long term and limit overall system costs.
Grid Tariffs Becoming More Time-Variable
In parallel, the German Federal Network Agency (Bundesnetzagentur) is further developing the grid tariff system as part of its so-called AgNes process. The agency is discussing the introduction of a time component for households with controllable consumption devices: Depending on the grid area, certain times of day could become cheaper or more expensive in order to steer flexible consumption in a targeted way.
The pilot project shows: A robust digital process chain is crucial—so that a price signal becomes automated control.
Real-World Pilot with an End-to-End Process Chain
Between March and December 2025, an interdisciplinary consortium of transmission and distribution system operators, energy suppliers, aggregators, car manufacturers, and partners from academia and consulting developed a concept for calculating dynamic grid tariffs and tested it in a field trial. Led by UnternehmerTUM, participants included Bayernwerk Netz, EWE NETZ, LEW Verteilnetz, TransnetBW, BMW, MAINGAU Energie, Octopus Energy Germany, TenneT, RWTH Aachen, and others. For the pilot, grid-area-specific grid tariff signals with 15-minute granularity were published and integrated into optimization logics.
Grid-Friendly Charging Without Loss of Comfort: The Mobility House Energy’s Technology Automatically Responds to Grid and Market Signals
As a technology provider, The Mobility House Energy translated grid operator signals and market data into concrete control decisions, making the flexibility of many vehicles usable as a pooled resource. Technical constraints (e.g., departure times, target state of charge, power limits) are automatically taken into account. The result: grid-friendly charging without any loss of comfort—because optimization runs seamlessly in the background.
"The pilot results show that automated load shifting can reduce peak loads—relieving grids and making grid expansion more efficient. For customers, one thing always applies: The car is available as planned with the desired state of charge. Within this framework, our technology automatically optimizes based on grid and electricity market signals, ensuring charging is both cost-effective and grid-friendly. With V2G, we go even further: Vehicles absorb renewable energy when it is abundant and feed it back when needed—that’s EV driving with zero emissions, zero costs."
Valentin Kunkel, Head of Product and Fulfillment VGI,
The Mobility House Energy
From Pilot to Product: eyond Enables Smart Charging (V1G) Today
With our green electricity tariff eyond, we have enabled Smart Charging (V1G) for EVs and entire households for three years. For users, this delivers clear added value: up to 10 cents in savings per kilowatt-hour charged smartly via the app—achieved through automated optimization of charging times and minimization of electricity and grid fee costs.
Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G) as the Next Step – Actively Providing and Monetizing Flexibility
Smart Charging is the entry point, Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G) expands the lever: Vehicles can feed energy back into the system when needed. This flexibility can be pooled, offered as a marketable service, and utilized in European electricity markets. The Mobility House Energy is a technology provider and pioneer in this field.
For 15 years, the company has developed and operated aggregation and trading technology for flexible assets. In 2024, the world’s first commercial V2G product launched in France with Renault & Mobilize. In Germany, product rollouts with Mercedes-Benz and Toyota will follow in 2026.