Vehicle-to-Grid as a 5G Smart Grid Vertical: Non-Technical Barriers and Implications for Communication Networks
2026-07-01 • Networking and Internet Architecture
Networking and Internet Architecture
AI summaryⓘ
The authors studied many papers about Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G) and Vehicle-to-Everything (V2X) technologies, showing that these systems work well technically but face bigger challenges in business, policy, society, and infrastructure. They found that after 2021, research shifted to focus more on these non-technical barriers. By connecting these challenges to communication needs, the authors explain why 5G networks for V2G require not just technical solutions but also must consider privacy, protocols, and service quality. Their work suggests future research should combine technology with social and policy factors to make V2G systems work better.
Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G)Vehicle-to-Everything (V2X)5G networksISO 15118OCPPsmart gridprotocol interoperabilitylatency and reliabilityprivacy-by-designedge-cloud computing
Authors
Shangqing Wang, Laura del Rio Carazo, Frank H. P. Fitzek
Abstract
Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G) and broader Vehicle-to-Everything (V2X) technologies are technically mature and widely demonstrated, yet large-scale deployment is constrained mainly by non-technical rather than communication or power-electronics limits. This paper targets the wireless communications community and frames V2G as a 5G-enabled smart grid vertical, linking business, governance, social, and infrastructure barriers to concrete communication-system requirements. Building on a PRISMA-guided systematic review of 974 V2G/V2X publications (2009-2025), and 162 implementation-critical studies, we adopt a four-domain framework of non-technical barriers: Business/Economic, Governance/Policy, Social, and Infrastructure/Ecosystem. Temporal and regional analyses show a shift from technical dominance to multidisciplinary integration after 2021. We translate these domains into communication requirements for V2G verticals, including fine-grained metering and settlement, protocol interoperability (e.g., ISO~15118, OCPP), privacy-by-design data governance, latency- and reliability-differentiated services, and edge-cloud partitioning for flexibility control. The results demonstrate that 5G design for V2G cannot be a purely technical optimization task and must integrate socio-technical constraints from the outset, suggesting research directions for sustainable, data-driven V2G communication architectures.