UL Standards and Engagement released UL 1741 Supplement SC in May 2026, covering alternating current bidirectional electric vehicle supply equipment serving vehicles fitted with bidirectional onboard inverters certified to SAE J3072. The supplement treats the charging equipment as an oversight supervisor for the vehicle, so certification no longer depends on qualifying one specific vehicle-and-charger pair. The International Organization for Standardization published Amendment 1 to ISO 15118-20 in July 2026, extending the communication standard that governs bidirectional power transfer between vehicle and charger. Taken with SAE J3072, which allows a vehicle to declare grid support capability consistent with IEEE 1547, these publications give interconnection engineers a documented basis on which to approve export from a parked vehicle rather than a bespoke study for every combination.
Where the Revenue Sits Before Wholesale Markets Open
The remaining challenge is market access. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission issued Order No. 2222 in September 2020 in Docket No. RM18-9-000, requiring regional transmission organizations to open wholesale markets to aggregations of distributed energy resources, and largely reaffirmed it in Order No. 2222-A in March 2021. Implementation has been staged region by region rather than nationally. In the PJM Interconnection footprint, which covers New Jersey, the distributed energy resource aggregator participation model is scheduled to take effect on 1 February 2028, following successive compliance filings and an approved change of effective date. Wholesale revenue from aggregated vehicle batteries in this market is a distant future opportunity rather than a current one, and any business case presented to a board on a shorter horizon must be built on something else.
That something else is retail. Demand charge management at fleet and transit depots, time-of-use rate arbitrage, resilience and backup power for priority facilities, and utility-managed charging programs are the main sources of near-term value. These opportunities are typically realized at the distribution level rather than through wholesale markets. The U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Electricity describes the relationship as mutually beneficial: vehicles remain parked for long periods, creating an opportunity to use their flexibility, while rising electricity demand will require greater participation from both the demand and supply sides. For logistics operators and transit agencies with predictable dwell patterns, that flexibility is a schedulable asset rather than a speculative one.
State regulatory design will decide how much of that value reaches the site host. Pursuant to a May 2026 order, the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities instructed state electric distribution companies to seek a budget-neutral extension of their light-duty EV programs, preserving the active incentive and rate framework until formal rules are established. Rules written in that window will settle metering configuration, export compensation, and whether a parked vehicle is treated as controllable load, as generation, or as both. Infrastructure investors, aggregators, and technology providers should read that proceeding as the practical determinant of bidirectional project economics in this market, well ahead of the wholesale opening.
Urban EV Charging USA 2027 brings utilities, fleet operators, transit agencies, hardware manufacturers, and infrastructure investors together to test bidirectional business cases against the new certification pathway, the staged opening of wholesale markets, and the retail programs design now being settled by state regulators.
