Flexibility Management for Recharge’s EV Charging Network

The Challenge

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Recharge, the largest high-power charging network in the Nordics, wanted to maximize the value of its charging sites beyond selling electricity. In competitive energy markets, it can make more financial sense to sell flexibility services — the ability to quickly adjust consumption to support grid balance — than to provide charging alone.

However, to qualify for these markets, charging infrastructure must meet strict requirements from the Transmission System Operator (TSO), including the ability to respond to grid activation signals in under eight seconds.

The Solution

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Together with FLEXECHARGE and with Fever, as the Balancing Service Partner, Recharge launched the world’s first Virtual Power Plant (VPP) built on public DC fast chargers.

The solution enables Recharge’s ultra-fast charging hubs to:

• Dynamically adjust load across chargers within seconds to participate in frequency containment reserve (FCR) markets.
• Aggregate 43 MWh of capacity, across 66 sites and more than 500 high-power charge points, into a single flexibility resource.
• Redistribute power reductions intelligently across charging sessions to avoid any impact on the EV driver experience.
• Comply with TSO requirements through collaboration with EVSE partners Alpitronic and Kempower, which adapted their chargers for sub-8-second response

By intelligently redistributing power reductions across many simultaneous charging sessions, the system ensures smooth compliance with grid activations — without compromising the user experience.

Expected Impact

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• New revenue streams: Access to lucrative grid flexibility markets alongside traditional charging income.
• Grid stability: Recharge sites now contribute to balancing electricity supply and demand.
• Scalability: Initial rollout in Sweden’s SE3 region, with potential expansion to more grid areas and future integration with battery storage.
• Future-proofed CPO model: Public charging networks evolving from pure consumers to active grid assets.