Future-Proofing the Grid with Smart Charging and Microgrids

For utilities and Distribution System Operators (DSOs), ensuring the stability of the power grid through better peak management is an ongoing challenge. Rapid increases in energy usage across facilities, such as data centers (where AI requirements are driving up unprecedented levels of energy consumption), push the limits of grid capacities and lead to reduced reliability and higher outage rates. Unmanaged load growth strains the infrastructure, increases operational costs, and undermines electricity service levels.

Traditionally, utilities managed peak load by investing in costly new transmission, distribution, or generation capacity. Today, advances in technologies such as microgrids and EV smart charging systems give utilities and DSOs new ways to manage demand—shifting usage patterns, introducing dynamic rate designs, and integrating distributed energy resources to balance the grid more efficiently.

New study highlights peak management optimization across 65 use cases

To better understand the impact of both EV smart charging systems and microgrids (a combination of solar generation, battery energy storage, and software) on utility peak management, the Sustainability Research Institute has recently issued a comprehensive report entitled Toward net zero buildings: The investment case for smart EV integration. This report, in addition to analyzing the economic benefits for building owners and the levels of EV owner satisfaction, also examines the impact of smart charging and microgrids on peak load management.

Across five building types and 65 use cases, the study considers variables such as EV penetration and microgrids in 13 different geographies. The building types analyzed include large offices, schools, hospitals, retail malls, and small hotels.

The research specifically examines the impact of investing in a microgrid today (with a microgrid sized to optimize ROI at 2025 EV penetration levels) and projects that impact through to 2035, assuming scenarios that project strong increases in EV penetration. The research finds that such an investment is future-proofed. Even in the case of strong increases in EV penetration, the microgrid infrastructure can still support a high level of ROI and EV user satisfaction.

How a two-pronged peak management strategy can work

The study considers important questions like how microgrids (software + solar + battery) reduce peak problems and how DSOs and building managers can manage hundreds of electric cars coming onto the building site each day (for example, in the region of Norway, for the 2035 office building archetype, 2000 people will be equipped with 200 chargers or more). Such increases in EV loads affect both peak management formulas and energy consumption costs.

The study reveals three principal areas where new technologies benefit grid stability by reducing overloads and deferring costly upgrades:

• Microgrid deployments – Current energy market trends favor microgrids and solar, a common driver of microgrids. Lower electricity generation prices make microgrids increasingly cost-effective to operate. Prices are also declining for electric energy storage, allowing for more effective self-consumption of solar energy. When buildings add a microgrid, the research revealed up to 50% capacity headroom recovery, leaving room for new loads.
• EV smart charging – Study results revealed that uncontrolled EV charging pushes buildings to exceed grid power limits in 80% of use cases. The result: higher connection costs and strained networks. Smart charging, however, spreads demand across low-tariff hours while still meeting drivers’ needs. This approach eliminates peak overloads across all modeled cases without compromising EV readiness. Smart charging is necessary to spread the charging load across optimized time intervals.
• Avoided grid costs – When DSOs and utilities experience peak problems, they traditionally add expensive MV and/or LV transformers to remedy the issue. In addition, direct EV charging (which operates without specific energy flow controls) necessitates an increase in the size of the power delivery “pipes” (i.e., a need to deploy more copper lines). Deploying these new copper lines takes time and years of grid planning (between two and five years).

EV smart charging can help to avoid such scenarios and defer the up-front expense. It helps buy time as the grid continues its process of gradual modernization. Through smart charging, DSOs can accommodate more EVs without placing much more burden on the grid. But at some point, when EVs and charging stations continue to proliferate, smart charging may not be enough. That’s why, when building owners supplement smart charging with local rooftop, solar and battery microgrids, utilities can experience long-term peak management benefits.

Reducing peak load while demand expands

The SRI study conclusions are clear: Besides minimizing peak load issues, smart charging helps DSOs and utilities to defer investment in expensive new grid connections and MV/LV transformers. Smart charging enables the grid operator to more effectively distribute the growing power demand loads. Additionally, deploying microgrids reduces energy consumption peaks because rooftop solar systems provide extra electrons, thereby alleviating the burden on the grid.