Europe's EV charging rollout needs €24.7bn of grid investment by 2030, Siemens study finds

The €24.7 billion charging bill

The study was prepared for the charging industry association ChargeUp, the carmakers' group ACEA and EIT Urban Mobility. It forecasts that EV numbers will grow 3.8 times on average across 64 cities in the 27 EU countries plus Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway by 2030.

The study puts a number on the local grid cost of switching to EVs. For drivers, that decides whether charging points arrive fast enough, and whether network costs land on bills. For utilities and regulators, the open question is who pays for low-voltage upgrades, and whether voluntary flexibility from data centres can be counted on.

Most of it goes to low-voltage networks, the part that serves slower charging at homes and workplaces. Germany carries the largest requirement, followed by Norway, Belgium and the Netherlands, countries that already have significant EV fleets. Uptake will grow fastest in eastern Europe, but from a lower base, the study found.

Smart meters that shift charging into hours when demand is lowest could cut €10.6 billion, or 40%, from the total.

Utilities are already spending

E.ON shows what the spending looks like in practice. It runs Hungary's largest distribution network, 88,000 km long, serving about 3.4 million customers.

Under an EU-funded programme the company is carrying out grid investments worth nearly HUF 230 billion. The work creates more than 2,300 MW of additional connection capacity by 2030, earmarked for renewable energy. In parallel it is spending HUF 13.5 billion on 237,000 additional smart meters by the end of 2028, taking its total to nearly 600,000.

In an interview with the Budapest Business Journal, E.ON's Guntram Würzberg said EU funds cover only around a quarter of the grid investments the company plans. For every forint it receives from Brussels, it adds three of its own, provided regulators allow fair and reliable tariffs.

Equipment makers consolidate

At the hardware end, GE Vernova agreed to buy Trench Group for $9 billion, expanding capacity in its Electrification segment. The deal brings high-voltage grid equipment manufacturing in house.

Trench Group adds an established operating base in Europe and Asia to GE Vernova's power infrastructure footprint, including advanced 765 kilovolt equipment production capacity. The cash and debt funded deal is expected to close in late 2027.

Flexibility is cheaper, but limited

Data centres are the other fast-growing load on the same grids. Ember's October 2026 analysis covers nine markets in the US, Europe and Southeast Asia, with particular relevance to Ireland, the UK and Germany.

A large data centre can need between 200 MW and 500 MW of power capacity, and be built within 18 to 24 months. Conventional grid expansion can take four to 10 years.

In Ireland, data centres already account for about 19% of peak demand. In January 2025, when system demand peaked at 6 GW, they accounted for an estimated 1.1 GW. Ember projects that share could reach 24% by 2030, with data centre demand at 1.6 GW against a system peak of 6.5 GW.

Shifting computing workloads away from stressed hours sounds like the cheap answer. Ember finds it is a small one. Load shifting could cut Ireland's peak by about 100 MW by 2030, or 1.5% of the projected peak. Across the other markets analysed, estimated reductions range from 0.1% to 0.6%.

Behind-the-meter generation and storage does better, delivering nearly five times as much relief, with potential reductions of up to 2.7 GW in Texas.

The assumptions behind the load-shifting figure are strict. Ember gives AI training workloads 35% flexibility, inference 5% and traditional data centres none. That leaves about 6.5% of global capacity theoretically shiftable, and roughly 3% effectively available at an average utilisation rate of about 48%.

On 3 November OpenAI launched a non-binding Grid Protectors Program to cut demand from future data centre campuses when the US grid is under strain. The company said US data centre capacity is projected to exceed 100 GW by 2030.

OpenAI said it will provide up to 1 GW of flexible demand response.

What happens next

A European Commission proposal to promote predictable and cheaper off-peak prices across the bloc could help consumers move charging to cheaper hours.

OpenAI pointed to a deal with Georgia Power under which it committed to pay the full cost of the infrastructure required to serve a data centre. It said it will share additional commitments as they are finalised.

GE Vernova expects the Trench Group acquisition to close in late 2027.