Solar’s rise required more than better technology. It took industry advocates, public-interest organizations, organized customers, and a compelling vision of how distributed energy could benefit consumers and the grid. V2G may need the same.
September 29, 2026
Vehicle-grid integration advocates spend considerable time discussing technology, standards, interconnection, utility programs and compensation. All are essential. But the history of the U.S. solar industry points to another requirement for moving an emerging distributed energy technology into a commercial market: an advocacy ecosystem capable of creating, defending and continually improving the policies that allow the technology to scale.
Solar did not develop that ecosystem overnight, nor did it wait until distributed solar had become a large commercial market. National and regional industry associations, independent advocates, technical organizations and customer groups emerged over time, supported by companies, philanthropy, government grants and public-benefit funds. VGI has begun building pieces of a similar infrastructure, but today’s advocacy ecosystem remains far less developed than the one that eventually formed around distributed solar.
Why VGI Needs a Movement
The case for building that ecosystem is becoming more urgent because VGI is entering a period in which policy and market rules will increasingly determine what happens next. Managed charging is already being deployed across multiple utility territories, while bidirectional-capable vehicles and charging equipment are beginning to reach customers. States and utilities are confronting increasingly practical questions: Which certification pathways will be recognized? How should discharged electricity be compensated? Can aggregators participate directly in utility programs? Can EVs provide both distribution and wholesale services? What metering and communications requirements are really necessary?
But the opportunity is larger than creating workable rules for a new charging technology. EVs represent a fast-growing source of distributed battery storage that is already being deployed at massive scale for transportation. Millions of batteries are being manufactured and purchased primarily to provide mobility, and managed and bidirectional charging can give customers greater choice over how those assets are used, whether to lower electricity costs, provide backup power or, when vehicles are plugged in and available, provide services to the broader grid.
The potential scale is enormous. The California Energy Commission estimates that California’s light-duty battery-electric vehicle fleet alone represented approximately 18.5 GW of potential storage power capacity in 2025, already comparable to the scale of the state’s stationary energy storage fleet. Not every vehicle will be plugged in, bidirectional-capable or available when the grid needs it, but even a portion of the growing EV fleet could become a significant source of grid flexibility.
That opportunity is particularly compelling because these batteries are already being manufactured, financed, and deployed for another purpose. According to U.S. Department of Energy analysis of the National Household Travel Survey, household vehicles are parked about 95% of a typical day. That means a large, growing pool of battery capacity sits idle most of the day, creating an opportunity to get more value from assets society is already deploying while preserving their primary purpose of transportation.
VGI could also create a more participatory electricity system by giving customers greater control over how they use the energy stored in their vehicles. EV owners, school districts, transit agencies, and commercial fleets could decide when to charge, when to use stored energy to cut costs or provide backup power, and when to make some of that capacity available to the grid. In doing so, they could become providers of flexibility, capacity, and other grid services and be compensated for the value their vehicles provide. Just as rooftop solar gave customers a more direct role in electricity production, VGI could give millions of customers a more active role in managing their own energy use while also supporting the broader grid.
That places VGI at the intersection of consumer choice, clean transportation and a more distributed and participatory energy system. It should not be viewed simply as a transportation technology seeking special programs, but as part of broader conversations about storage, flexible load, virtual power plants, renewable integration, distribution planning and affordability. That broader public-interest proposition may ultimately provide the foundation for the movement VGI will need.
What Solar Built and Why It Mattered
Solar offers a useful lesson because the institutions that helped distributed solar scale were not created after a large market already existed. Many helped create the policies and market rules that allowed that market to emerge. The Solar Energy Industries Association traces its origins to 1974, when a small group of solar industry pioneers came together to create a national trade association at a time when there was hardly a commercial solar industry to represent. SEIA helped establish an industry voice around federal energy policy and commercialization long before distributed solar became commonplace.
As distributed solar expanded, the challenge increasingly became one of market formation. The Interstate Renewable Energy Council became an important source of independent technical and regulatory expertise. Founded in 1982, IREC was working on interconnection and net metering by the 1990s, publishing its first Connecting to the Grid guide in 1997 and later developing model net-metering rules in 2003 and model interconnection procedures in 2005. That work gave states frameworks and best practices to draw from as they developed the rules that would govern a growing distributed solar market.
Independent public-interest advocacy also emerged. Vote Solar launched in 2002 with two employees and a $50,000 Energy Foundation grant, creating something an industry association could not provide on its own: an independent organization able to make the case that expanding distributed solar was not simply good for solar companies, but could advance competition, consumer choice and broader public-interest goals. Customers eventually became another voice through organizations such as Solar United Neighbors, which traces its beginnings to a Washington, D.C., neighborhood solar cooperative launched in 2007 and evolved from group purchasing into customer organizing and policy advocacy.
That customer voice mattered because a homeowner could make a different case than an installer. A company could explain that a utility requirement made a project uneconomic, while a customer could explain how the same requirement affected their investment, their energy bill and their ability to use equipment installed on their property. Over time, solar developed something much larger than a trade association: an ecosystem of industry advocacy, independent technical expertise, philanthropically supported public-interest organizations, organized customers and specialized groups focused on particular market segments.
The lesson for VGI is not that every solar institution needs a V2G equivalent. It is that distributed-energy technologies often need multiple voices performing different but complementary functions if they are going to shape the rules governing their markets.
What Is Missing From the VGI Ecosystem?
The Vehicle-Grid Integration Council fills an important part of this landscape. Formed in 2020 as a national trade association representing automakers, EV service providers and technology companies, VGIC has advocated on V2G interconnection, managed charging, rate design, demand response, compensation and utility VGI programs in California and a growing number of other states. Other organizations, including IREC, the Electrification Coalition, Regulatory Assistance Project, Smart Electric Power Alliance and environmental and consumer groups, also engage on pieces of VGI, but in most cases VGI remains one issue within a much broader portfolio.
The result is that several functions that became important to solar remain limited or fragmented in VGI. There is not yet a clear equivalent of Vote Solar for VGI: an independent, philanthropically supported public-interest voice consistently appearing before utility commissions and legislatures to make the case that flexible EV charging and discharging can reduce system costs and improve renewable integration. There is no Solar United Neighbors for EV owners and fleets capable of mobilizing customers when utility rules prevent them from using batteries they own. While VGIC is doing important work to advance VGI interconnection, compensation and program design, often in collaboration with IREC, there is not yet an effort comparable in scope to IREC’s technical and model policy work that helped advance distributed solar across states.
The pieces exist, but they have not yet developed into a comparable advocacy ecosystem. There is also an important limitation to the solar analogy: V2G is not distributed solar. A solar array is stationary and exists primarily to produce electricity, while an EV is first and foremost a transportation asset. Its location changes, owners need its battery for driving, connection times vary, automakers remain involved in determining what the battery and power electronics can do, and V2G requires coordination among automakers, charger manufacturers, software platforms, aggregators, utilities and customers.
Those differences do not weaken the case for coordinated advocacy; in some respects, they strengthen it. More interfaces create more opportunities for an interconnection requirement, metering rule, communications specification or market-participation requirement to become a barrier. A resource spanning both transportation and electricity may therefore require more sustained policy coordination than solar did, not less.
V2G also starts from a different position because the core energy asset is already entering the market for another reason. The policy challenge is not simply how to finance new grid assets, but how to allow an existing and rapidly growing battery fleet to provide additional value when vehicles are parked, plugged in and available.
Who Will Build and Fund the Movement?
Building that capacity will require sustained funding. VGI companies can and should support industry advocacy, but industry funding alone is unlikely to create the independent voices, technical expertise and customer engagement that helped distributed solar develop durable markets. That creates an opportunity for foundations and NGOs working on the broader clean-energy transition because the case for supporting VGI reaches well beyond advancing a particular technology. It touches consumer choice, affordability, clean transportation, resource efficiency, storage, renewable integration and grid modernization.
VGI also sits at the intersection of two communities that have often approached decarbonization from different directions: clean-transportation advocates focused on electrifying vehicles and charging infrastructure, and clean-energy advocates focused on storage, distributed resources, grid flexibility, affordability, and renewable integration. Those communities increasingly need to work together, and a useful first step would be to convene automakers, charging companies, VGI technology providers, clean-transportation and clean-energy advocates, technical experts, consumer groups, fleets and philanthropy to develop a shared vision for VGI. That conversation should identify common policy priorities, gaps in the existing advocacy landscape, and which organizations are best positioned to lead different parts of the work.
A stronger advocacy ecosystem could also help VGI tell a clearer story about why the technology matters. The central message should extend beyond the vehicle-to-charger connection. As EVs increasingly share customer sites with solar, batteries and flexible loads, the entire site may need to operate as a coordinated grid resource while still protecting the driver’s transportation and backup power needs. That is not simply an interoperability challenge; it is part of a broader shift toward an electricity system in which customers and their energy assets can participate more actively in how the grid operates.
Don’t Wait Until VGI Is Big
Perhaps the most important lesson from solar is timing. The institutions that helped solar scale were not created after the market was established; they were built while the rules governing that market were still taking shape. VGI is at that point now, as states, utilities and grid operators decide how EVs can interconnect, how exported electricity should be compensated, how aggregators can participate, and how flexible resources fit within VPPs, distribution planning and electricity markets.
Without advocacy that is coordinated and sufficiently scaled, VGI risks being addressed unevenly or as an afterthought in policies and programs designed around other resources. Building that capacity now can help ensure that managed and bidirectional charging are considered from the outset as part of a broader portfolio that includes stationary storage, flexible loads and other distributed energy resources. Some existing organizations may expand their roles to meet the needs of VGI, while new organizations may emerge to fill gaps in the advocacy ecosystem.
Solar spent decades building the advocacy capacity that helped turn an emerging distributed technology into a major energy industry, and VGI has the advantage of learning from that experience. VGI does not need to recreate every institution solar built. But it does need the same combination of industry leadership, independent advocates, organized customers and a compelling public vision. If V2G is to become a major energy resource, that movement needs to be built while the rules are still being written, not after.
