Charging electric vehicles, eating pizzas, and safeguarding the grid in 2025

Back in 2015 an experiment was conducted in which the expected Dutch residential load for 2025 was created in practice by simultaneously charging electric vehicles and baking a lot of pizzas with a power outage as the result. In this work we reflect on the findings of that experiment given the current state of the energy transition and put forward key recommendations for EV integration in the grid for the coming years. The main findings are that the risk for unbalance is mitigated, but that overloading risks due to load synchronization effects by day-ahead price incentives exist in the upcoming years. Further system integration and robust fall-back mechanisms, such as GridShield, are required to avoid congestion and intervene in an autonomous manner. The main recommendation is that more systems thinking is required in the energy sector to support the digitization of the grid and the energy transition. For this we recommend adopting practices seen in the IT landscape.