A pilot launched in Gelderland in July 2026 pays EV drivers a financial reward, averaging 10 percent of their charging cost, for letting a public charging session shift to a quieter moment on the grid. The trial covers around 12,000 public charge points across the province and runs until January 2027. Six organisations built it: grid operator Liander supplies the capacity signal, Deftpower supplies the flexibility technology, Vattenfall and Allego operate the charge points, and ANWB and Athlon handle the driver-facing app and reward.
The mechanism is entirely software. A driver sets a departure time in the app, the flexibility platform decides when to actually deliver the power, and the charge point itself never changes, it just executes what it is told. That is the architecture worth noticing: the flexibility lives in a layer above the hardware, negotiated between the app, the flex platform and the back office running the charge point. The same pattern works on private terrain over OCPP, on whatever charger is already on the wall, which is what a charging back office that can talk to any brand of charge point buys a site owner. This pilot is public charging and a trial; Plugchoice is not part of it and does not offer a comparable reward today.
Sources: electrive.