A reflection on ICNC 2026

Fifteen years after the charging market took off, EV charging is far better organised than it was at the start. Yet the landscape gets more complex every year. More and more parties need to connect with each other, from CPOs and MSPs to hubs with their own business model, and this winter the grid operator joins in with control based on grid signals. Who coordinates the whole? Where does this new control belong? And what does the driver actually notice?

Those questions are the subject of the first episode of our podcast Laadinfrastructuur die gewoon moet werken (Charging infrastructure that just has to work), in which Boudewijn, Okke and Peter look back on ICNC in Berlin, the most important trade show of the year for ihomer. Read the full article below, or listen to the episode straight away.

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A chain without a director

The technology and the open standards for charging have existed for years. What is missing is someone who coordinates the whole.

Peter saw that on the ICNC main stage. In the talks on flexibility and grid problems, large organisations listed a series of possible problems from research, but how big those problems are, where they occur and how parties solve them together never came up. On the smaller stages, by contrast, he saw concrete solutions to one specific problem, with little attention to how they fit into the chain.

According to Peter, the real work lies in bringing everything together so that the end user is never inconvenienced. Between managing the charge point and settling the bill there are many steps and parties, and that landscape is only getting more complex.

An example from practice. A few years ago, the tender for Brabant and Limburg included a requirement for OCPP 2.0, a version that did not work in practice and was replaced almost immediately. A civil servant had seen it, so it had to go in. The winner had implemented OCPP 2.0 in its platform. Not on the charge points themselves.

The good news is that municipalities and regions now draw up their tender requirements together, starting from what works best for a user. Some local authorities also require that the cost of charging is visible at the charge point.

Where control based on grid signals belongs

It is precisely in this chain that the grid operator joins in this winter. From then on, fixed time blocks disappear. Every day, based on forecasts, the grid operator sets the limits for the coming day(s) within which CPOs (or other recipients of signals) must control their charge points. In the Netherlands this is done with Grid Aware Charging, a specification built on top of the open protocol OpenADR.

Okke gave a clear answer to this in his talk in the Tech Village. Control belongs outside the CPMS, for three reasons:

• Control is operational work. A CPMS is a management system. Optimally controlling a charge point based on grid signals and on the user's preferences is different work.
• Every region gets its own protocol. The Netherlands works with OpenADR, other parties use a completely different protocol.
• Joint control is only possible outside the CPMS. There you can control across CPOs, so operators in the same congestion area solve the problem together. Within a single CPMS that only works if they all use the same system, and you can never enforce that.

That CPMS vendors see it this way themselves became clear right after the talk. One of the largest vendors came up to Okke asking why they weren't doing business yet. This was exactly what they did not want in their CPMS.

So does that control sit with the MSP? You do increasingly see MSPs taking on smart control, and then as a CPO you become dependent on the MSP you do business with.

A note on roles. An MSP is originally a payment provider, a party that can negotiate volume agreements. Peter sums it up like this: "It would be absurd if your bank started telling you how many half loaves of bread you're allowed to buy this afternoon." If you want to see the roles in the charging market laid out once more, you'll find them in our starter guide for your own charging company.

With AFIR it shifts even further. CPOs have to offer ad hoc payment, and there are parties that are happy to arrange that direct payment for them. Then you are simply an MSP again, you just don't call yourself one.

A green tick, and nothing else

Whichever party handles control, the driver stands at the end of the chain. And right now he sees almost nothing of what happens in his session. Okke noticed it himself when he charged in Berlin. The display showed a green tick, and beyond that he had no idea what was happening or what it cost. He calls that his takeaway from ICNC. For all these years the sector has left the user behind.

With smart charging this becomes more urgent. A driver who plugs in at 11 pm and gets his car back at 80 percent is perfectly happy. That is the easy use case. If a driver wants to leave again in two hours, the constraints suddenly look very different, and you need to be able to explain to him what happened in his session and how he is being billed. According to Okke, we are a long way from that.

Grid-aware charging is the right direction. But the driver needs to see what happens in his session, otherwise it just looks like a slow charger to him.

A consolidating market

Anyone who starts controlling on grid signals this winter does so in a market that is consolidating. Etrel and Everon already disappeared from the market in 2025. Okke calls this consolidation his biggest lesson from ICNC. You need a good niche and must accelerate within it, and in smart charging he still sees few players who really do. Peter draws the same conclusion. His biggest lesson is to go all in on the platform for smart charging. Smart charging means controlling a charging session: when a car charges, how fast and how much. The control weighs up what the grid can handle, what electricity costs, what the driver needs and what the CPO wants. Okke calls that "one better decision".

At the same time, ICNC showed that after fifteen years, innovative solutions are still being added. There is still a lot to do.

In short

The technology for charging has been in place for years. The challenge for this winter lies in the chain: parties that know their role, control based on grid signals in its own layer outside the CPMS, and a driver who sees what happens with his session.

Ready for this winter?

Do you want to know if your charging network is ready for smart charging this winter?
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