Smart Campus V2G

The Project

As part of the Belgian Recovery and Resilience Plan (RRF), financed by the European Union (NextGenerationEU) with support from the Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles, five francophone universities are developing advanced tools for smart mobility and energy transition. Within this inter-university initiative (coordinated by ULB), the University of Liège (ULiège) — through the ISES team (Integrated System Energy Service, Laboratoire de Thermodynamique) — leads the Smart Campus V2G demonstrator.

The aim is to study, at full scale on the Sart Tilman campus, how electric vehicles, rooftop photovoltaics, stationary storage and intelligent energy management can be coordinated to reduce peak demand, maximise self-consumption, and provide flexibility services to the grid — helping ULiège move toward a more sustainable, resilient campus energy system while building one of the first operational V2G platforms in Belgium.

The documented investment totals 572 746 € TVAC (527 558 € HTVA)

Activities

ULiège (ISES) is specifically responsible for:

• Designing, procuring and commissioning a full-scale V2G living lab on building B52 and parking P52: ~330 kWp photovoltaic array (648 Trina modules), LiFePO₄ stationary storage (~96 kWh installed, expandable to ~193 kWh), 5 bidirectional DC chargers (25 kW, CCS2), 10 AC chargers (11 kW, V2G-ready), and an energy management system (Eniris SmartgridOne / SmartgridX).
• Operating a secondary domestic-scale site at building B49 (Labothap) with a residential bidirectional DC charger (ambiCHARGE) for V2H/V2B demonstration.
• Acquiring and managing two V2G-ready fleet vehicles (Kia EV6 84 kWh, VW ID. Buzz 86 kWh) for professional travel, inter-campus trips, partner meetings and pedagogical demonstrations — with centralised booking and strict rules to avoid in-kind benefits.
• Developing and testing smart charging and V2G strategies: peak shaving, self-consumption maximisation, grid injection limits (125 kW RESA constraint), and coordination between vehicle batteries, stationary storage and PV production.
• Supporting doctoral research on energy-flow optimisation, fleet management, battery degradation under V2G cycling, and transferable smart-charging strategies.
• Building a data and supervision platform (EMS dashboards, web interface, APIs) and making data and control interfaces available on request to partner universities across the FWB.
• Contributing to an inter-university test ecosystem, complementing ULB’s smart-charging platform (without V2G) to enable multi-site experimentation.

In Practice

ULiège’s contribution is led by Prof. Sylvain Quoilin and the ISES team. In practice, the team:

• Deploys infrastructure through contractor Enersol (electrical works, PV, storage, chargers, EMS integration, 5-year maintenance contract).
• Validates V2G functionality on real hardware — the Kia EV6 has confirmed bidirectional discharge with Sigenergy chargers; VW ID. Buzz testing is ongoing (ID.5 platform already validated).
• Uses Eniris SmartgridOne / SmartgridX to monitor and control chargers, inverters, batteries, meters and loads in real time, with configurable rules (self-consumption, peak shaving, dynamic tariffs, PV injection limits) and RESA RTU communication.
• Runs measurement campaigns once commissioned (planned end of June 2026) on self-consumption, peak shaving and grid services.
• Operates a public Smart Campus V2G website with technical documentation, a vehicle booking calendar (e-mail authentication for ULiège users) and live system dashboards fed from the EMS.
• Supports PhD students including Diffels, Jacquemin and Vanderbeeken, and evaluates advanced smart-charging algorithms (e.g. ANSITU Smart Charging, VUB) on a real installation.

These results are intended not only for ULiège but also for other campuses, industrial sites and neighbourhoods facing similar challenges of limited substation capacity, growing EV fleets and distributed renewable generation.

More information

Project website: https://smartcampus.fsa.uliege.be/