Electrification of vehicles has its share of benefits as well as risks for power distribution companies (DISCOMs). While electric vehicle (EV) adoption can potentially result in a substantial increase in revenue for DISCOMs from additional electricity sales due to EV charging, the gains may be accompanied by various risks.

Unmanaged EV charging will not only potentially increase the peak load in the DISCOM’s service area, which could have a significant impact on the cost of electricity supply, it can hamper smooth power system operations, by causing voltage instability, harmonic distortion, power losses, and degradation of reliability indices. To manage or avoid these impacts on the power system, there is a suite of EV charging management solutions, collectively referred to as Vehicle-Grid Integration (VGI). The benefits of VGI extend beyond EV charging load, as it can provide useful services to the grid. A plethora of new opportunities open up for the power market with the help of VGI such as peak shaving, arbitrage opportunities, frequency regulation, and renewable energy storage. This executive summary briefly outlines the importance of VGI, analyses the feasibility of its implementation in the Indian context and provides a roadmap for VGI implementation in India.