In collaboration with the U.S. Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) and with support from CharIN Global, the V2G Business, Policy & Technology Forum has initiated a project focused on demonstrating and validating independent components for End-to-End operation of the Utility to Vehicle communications chain. This Testbed will demonstrate a reference system architecture, a best-practice V2G communications topology, and foundational system-level testing procedures which can be used uniformly across the VGI sector.

Today, no standardized test procedure or system architecture exists for End-to-End Testing and Certification of V2G Grid Services. A key goal of this Testbed is to instantiate and demonstrate such an environment.

In addition to the V2G Forum's history of policy- and technically-centric presentations and demonstrations, the Fall 2026 V2G Forum will showcase an industry-first example of how standardized methods can enable more efficient evaluation of interconnection, communications, cybersecurity and system safety. The aim is to accelerate the objectives of Standards Development Organizations which share common goals and appropriately divided charter and governance.

Organizations developing commercially-focused, standards-compliant V2G devices, software or equipment intended to support scalable deployment objectives should consider joining this partnership to contribute to the Testbed. Prospective participants are encouraged to bring their technical expertise and commercialization objectives to support this sector-wide effort. Interested parties are asked to contact Daniel Coran at dcoran@smartgridobserver.com to be considered for inclusion in the Technical Planning Committee and Testbed partnership.

End-to-End Testbed

IMPORTANT
Please see more information below to complete the participant survey.

Source: QualityLogic

>> IMPORTANT REQUEST TO PROSPECTIVE PARTICIPANTS: We kindly ask that your company please review and complete the critical technical survey linked below.

The intent of this survey instrument is to clearly identify roles which potential participants may support in the overall implementation of the End-to-End Testbed.

Answers to these survey questions will be held in confidence by SGO and will be privately maintained within organizers of this activity. Upon maturation of the Testbed, contributing participants will have the option to request that SGO provide public statements regarding their components and systems included in the Testbed.

The initial round of the survey has been completed. However, organizations who still wish to participate are welcome to join the initiative by filling out the survey. We will contact you to discuss your involvement.

The End-to-End Testbed seeks to deliver foundational demonstration capabilities enabling End-to-End Communications and Power Flow evaluations. The intent of this activity is to seed industry stakeholders with capabilities supporting formalization of interoperability and conformance testing for the delivery of energy services. This will enable test equipment manufacturers to support pre-commercial validation capabilities so that Regulatory Stakeholders, NRTLs, Utilities, AHJs, Energy Market Operators, Resource Aggregators, Auto OEMs, EVSEs and Telematics Providers can observe and evaluate conformance to standards with the goal of establishing test protocols and certification criteria. Ultimately, standardization and certification procedures assure high-performance operations, end customer satisfaction, VGI sector scalability and multi-stakeholder benefits in the energy domain.

For October 2026, the specific goal of the Testbed is to introduce a standards-based, interoperable demonstration system for a specific use case – i.e., an energy service.

Proposed Testbed Configuration

Note: Diagram above depicts V2G AC End-to-End Testbed. The V2G DC system topology is the same, with the exception that the specific requirements for messaging and behaviors between the EV and EVSE apply the relevant protocols. While these standards represent approved protocols for VGI, other standards will be considered as requested.

In this Testbed, the default topology includes EVSE and EV simulators to represent both conformance to communications protocols and electrical functionality. The Testbed is preferentially configurable to enable substitution of actual Chargers and EV products, as shown above.

The partnership's objective is to simplify the base case analyses by treating HIL/SIL devices/systems as assumed to operate according to relevant requirements already defined by available standards - e.g., UL 1741 SC and SAE 3072. We acknowledge that this places a great deal of trust in the participants. We are hopeful that technically mature systems will be made available to identify gaps or opportunities to meet interoperability requirements. While the emphasis of this activity is to support demonstrations of the End-to-End communications for V2G, the Testbed will not to enable evaluation/validation of individual products; that effort is part of each participant's commercial development.

The Testbed generally facilitates evaluation of individual HIL/SIL devices/systems for a specific purpose. However, because the demonstration procedures include options for substituting any of the devices/systems under test to be represented by an emulated or simulated system, any of various scenario permutations can easily be addressed. To be clear, actual devices/systems can be utilized in place of the simulated systems, thereby enabling configuration versatility in the Testbed, achieving evaluation of functionality with actual products.

* Future iterations of the Testbed may be expanded to include a broader range of applications such as V1G, V2H, V2B, V2V, etc, but for October 2026 the scope is focused on V2G.

Participating in the Partnership

Testbed Objective