Episode 57 – Building the Open Smart Charging Ecosystem: 4 Voices From ICNC 2026 Berlin

Grid Costs, AI Support, and Real Interoperability

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EV charging infrastructure has largely solved the problem it set out to solve — the chargers exist, the networks work, drivers can find a plug. The harder question now is what happens next: does the system actually pay off, does it scale, and does it talk to itself across grid, software, and hardware boundaries.

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That question sat at the center of ICNC26 in Berlin this September, where the show's official theme — "Collaboration at Scale: Establishing the Open Smart Charging Ecosystem" — pushed the industry to treat interoperability as something bigger than plugs and protocols, extending it into grid data, smart charging, and the wider energy-mobility convergence.

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Christophe Lephilibert recorded four short conversations live on the ICNC26 show floor to unpack that theme from four different angles: Joakim Arvidsson, co-founder of Peak Energy, on the hidden complexity of grid connection costs; Bradford Crist, CEO and co-founder of ChargeMate, on AI-driven driver support built for revenue recovery rather than just cost-cutting; Oumaima Bounouadar, co-founder and CEO of OCPP Lab, on why component-level testing isn't enough to catch real-world interoperability failures; and Jaap Burger, an independent EV grid-integration consultant, on the gap between technical maturity and the regulatory conversation CPOs still aren't having.

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Four different problems, one shared thread: building an open ecosystem is less about a single breakthrough and more about a lot of unglamorous, necessary plumbing work across cost, testing, support, and policy.

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What You Will Learn in This Episode

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This episode covers four distinct but connected angles on building an open, collaborative EV charging ecosystem:

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• Why grid connection fees and peak charges are scattered, non-standardized, and genuinely difficult to track across different DSOs.
• How the market's priorities have shifted from fast hardware rollout, to reliability and UX, to today's focus on cost and profitability.
• Why AI-driven driver support should be judged on revenue recovery and retention, not just on reducing support costs.
• What a continuous, automated approach to OCPP/OCPI interoperability testing looks like, and why manual testing can't keep up.
• Why testing individual components isn't enough — many real issues only appear when systems interact across a driver's full charging journey.
• Why so few charge point operators bring their grid-flexibility value directly to regulators and DSOs, despite it being a real revenue opportunity.
• Where real-world vehicle-to-grid deployment actually stands today versus where the industry expected it to be two years ago.