The real value in the power market is no longer the kilowatt-hour itself. It is the ability to decide when electricity is consumed, stored, or exported, and to turn that timing into lower costs, better system utilisation and new margins.
For years, flexibility sat in the category of “important in the future”, and that is no longer true. The economics are starting to show up now, and in several places at once: household bills, balancing costs, grid congestion, intraday exposure, and in the commercial advantage held by whoever controls the customer relationship.
That is why the recent Danish discussion matters.
A recent DNV analysis estimated that smart charging and vehicle-to-grid services could generate around DKK 480 million (~€ 64 million) per year in direct consumer benefits by 2030. The same study estimated another DKK 94 million (~€12.5 million) in indirect savings through lower overall system costs, mainly from cheaper power and heat production.
What makes these numbers interesting is not just their size, but the fact they make flexibility tangible. The discussion moves away from generic “smart home” promises and into measurable business value.
The NEON study reaches a similar conclusion from a different angle. EVs, heat pumps and home batteries already contain built-in flexibility because they can shift consumption over time. And the real bottleneck is no longer the hardware, but whether tariffs, control systems, settlement models and customer propositions are designed well enough to make that flexibility usable and profitable.
Where the value actually comes from
The first source of value is simple: lower customer bills.
Most households do not care about market design or balancing mechanisms. They care about convenience and cost. For example, smart charging works because the customer usually does not need the car charged immediately (only by the next morning). And this creates a natural flexibility window with very little behavioural change required.
NEON estimates that flexible EV charging can reduce EV-related electricity costs by up to 57% under a fully flexible tariff model. That is a compelling retail proposition, not just a system optimisation story.
The second source of value is lower system cost.
According to NEON, flexible EV charging can reduce system costs linked to EV demand by as much as 70% compared with uncontrolled charging. For heat pumps, the reduction is estimated at up to 24%.
Those are meaningful numbers because flexibility shifts demand away from expensive or constrained hours and toward periods with spare renewable generation and lower marginal costs.
The third source is grid relief.
Consumer flexibility will not eliminate the need for grid reinforcement, and some market narratives oversell that point. But it can reduce pressure during peak hours and delay part of the required investment in local networks.
Interestingly, NEON’s modelling suggests that even tariff structures focused purely on wholesale price signals can reduce grid stress, because high-price hours often overlap with periods of network congestion.
The fourth source of value sits closer to trading and portfolio management.
A flexible household portfolio can reduce imbalance costs, improve forecasting, respond to intraday spreads and eventually participate in balancing or congestion markets. At that point, the supplier role starts looking less like traditional retail and more like a distributed optimisation business.
Then there is the strategic layer.
Whoever controls the EV charger, the battery, the heat pump and the optimisation software effectively controls the operating system of the home. That position may become more valuable than the electricity contract itself.
Indicative value potential by asset type
Asset / flexibility source | Near-term value logic | Value potential |
EV smart charging | Shift charging away from high-price and high-stress hours while keeping the car ready when needed. | Strong near-term customer and system value. NEON estimates up to 57% lower EV electricity bill and up to 70% lower system cost in the modelled case. |
Vehicle-to-grid | Use the EV battery as distributed storage, not just flexible demand. | Larger upside, but more dependent on hardware, settlement, interoperability and customer acceptance. Danish DNV analysis includes V2G in the DKK 480m annual direct consumer benefit potential by 2030. |
Heat pumps | Shift heat production using thermal storage and building inertia without reducing comfort. | Material system value. NEON estimates up to 24% lower system cost and around 19% lower heat-pump electricity bill in the modelled full-flex case. |
Home batteries | Move from self-consumption optimisation to system-friendly charging and discharging. | High strategic relevance. NEON finds that system-friendly operation creates almost seven times more system benefit than classic self-consumption optimisation in the analysed case. |
Aggregated household portfolio | Combine EVs, heat pumps, batteries and solar into a forecastable and controllable portfolio. | Strategic value pool: imbalance reduction, intraday optimisation, future balancing participation and stronger customer ownership. |
Why smart charging will probably scale first
Smart charging has the clearest commercial logic.
Customers already understand the trade-off: the car does not need power immediately, it just needs to be ready when they leave. Compared with other forms of flexibility, that is an easy behavioural shift to accept.
This also sharpens the Danish opportunity. If smart charging and V2G together could generate DKK 480 million (~€ 64 million) annually by 2030, the important commercial question becomes: who owns the interface, the optimisation layer and the customer trust?
Probably not the company quietly supplying commodity power in the background.
V2G could eventually become the larger opportunity, but the market is not fully there yet. Battery degradation concerns, bidirectional hardware costs, interoperability issues, and settlement complexity still matter. The more bankable near-term business case is controllable charging and flexible household load.
V2G is the upside option if the ecosystem matures.
The supplier role is changing
Electricity suppliers are not disappearing. Billing, settlement, onboarding, compliance and customer service still matter.
The problem is differentiation.
If another company controls the charging app, the home battery logic, the optimisation engine and the customer data layer, the supplier risks becoming a back-office utility function with limited pricing power.
That is where the margin pool is moving: forecasting, orchestration, optimisation, device integration and customer experience.
This is a very different capability stack from traditional retail energy. It requires software integration, operational reliability, device partnerships and market expertise at the same time.
The winning proposition will probably not even be marketed as “flexibility.”
It will sound much simpler:
Lower bills. Automatic charging. A comfortable home. No manual optimisation. One provider accountable for everything.
The complexity stays in the background.
What utilities and aggregators need to decide
The strategic choice is becoming clearer.
One option is to remain a commodity retailer competing mainly on price and operational efficiency. That business will continue to exist, but the strategic position in the household may shift elsewhere.
The other option is to become part of the orchestration layer around the home.
That does not mean owning every device or building every algorithm internally. But it does mean taking responsibility for the customer proposition and making sure the optimisation, data flows, settlement and communication work together as a coherent service.
To move early, companies do not need a perfect end-state platform. They need a credible starting point: smart charging, dynamic tariffs, basic device integration, transparent savings reporting, and a roadmap for heat pumps, batteries and eventually V2G.
In a fragmented market, simplicity becomes an advantage on its own.
The investment case
Consumer flexibility is one of the few areas in power where customer incentives, system needs and commercial upside can genuinely align.
The Danish numbers make the opportunity feel more immediate and less theoretical, and is making it move away from just a regulatory discussion. There is measurable economic value already forming at household level.
There are 3 different opportunities:
- In the short-term, the opportunity lies on smart charging and load shifting
- In the medium-term, opportunity is coordinated optimisation across EVs, batteries, heat pumps and solar.
- The longer-term opportunity is aggregated household portfolios participating directly in energy markets.
The broader shift is hard to ignore: the household is turning into a small energy portfolio.
And the companies that make that portfolio easy to manage while quietly optimising it in the background are likely to hold one of the strongest positions in the next phase of the power market.
Consumer flexibility is quickly moving from pilot projects to core business strategy.
If you’re assessing what role your organisation should play in household orchestration, flexibility trading or customer propositions, let’s talk!
