The slogan “EV charger-ready” is already appearing at new housing developments. It is an important sign that electromobility is becoming part of the everyday planning of buildings and residential estates. True readiness, however, requires far more than a space for a wallbox: adequate power, new grid connections, smart energy management, a reliable public network, and vehicles and batteries capable of using it efficiently. We look at where Poland stands today and what we need to do before 2030.
Sometimes a single sentence on a construction-site fence says more about the direction of change than an elaborate presentation.
At one of the new housing developments near Kraków, we noticed the slogan: “EV charger-ready”. It was listed among the key features of the planned estate — alongside solutions that homebuyers increasingly regard as part of modern, well-planned construction.
That is a good sign. It means that infrastructure for electric cars is no longer treated as an exotic add-on to be thought about at some point in the future. Developers are starting to take it into account as early as the design stage of buildings, installations and parking spaces.
At the same time, a far more important question arises:
Will the Polish energy system keep pace with the growing number of cars, chargers and pledges?
Simply installing a device does not in itself create functional infrastructure. A charger is merely the last and most visible element of a much larger system that includes grid connections, transformers, distribution networks, protection devices, communications, billing systems, software, data, buildings, and the vehicles themselves and their batteries.
According to the Licznik Elektromobilności (Electromobility Counter) published by the Polish industry associations PZPM and PSNM, at the end of August 2026 there were 13,731 publicly accessible charging points in operation in Poland. Around 51% were DC points and 49% were AC points with an output not exceeding 22 kW. psnm.org
Meanwhile, on 10 October 2026, the Alternative Fuels Infrastructure Register (EIPA) kept by the Office of Technical Inspection (UDT) listed 16,870 registered points. EIPA notes, however, that this figure also includes points that are not available to users. eipa.udt.gov.pl
This discrepancy does not necessarily indicate an error. It does, however, reveal an important analytical problem: the infrastructure count depends on the definition used.
It is necessary to distinguish between:
a registered point,
a commissioned point,
a publicly accessible point,
a temporarily out-of-service point,
an occupied point,
a station with several connectors,
a genuinely available charging bay where you can park and start charging.
That is why, when comparing data, it is important to check not only the figure itself but also the methodology used to calculate it.
The national policy framework for alternative fuels envisages reaching 86,949 publicly accessible charging points by 2030. That is a huge gap compared with the current scale of the market and a clear signal that the pace of investment will have to accelerate sharply. www.gov.pl
Simply multiplying the current number of devices will not be enough, however.
Two cities can have the same number of charging points and yet offer drivers completely different levels of usability.
The value of a network is also determined by:
the location of stations,
the power output of each point,
the total power of the entire site,
the ability to charge several vehicles at the same time,
the actual availability of devices,
reliability and fault-repair times,
price transparency,
ease of initiating payment,
up-to-date data in apps,
the ability to drive in and park,
safety and round-the-clock access.
Ten 22 kW AC points and one 350 kW DC point serve entirely different purposes. The first option can efficiently serve a car park at an office, hotel or residential estate. The second is needed along a route where a driver wants to top up energy during a short stop.
Good infrastructure is not about installing the most powerful devices everywhere. It is about delivering the right power where it is actually needed.
AC charging uses alternating current. The energy is converted into direct current by the on-board charger inside the car. The maximum power therefore depends not only on the wallbox or charging post but also on the capabilities of the vehicle. If a car accepts a maximum of 11 kW AC, connecting it to a 22 kW point will not make it charge at 22 kW.
DC charging delivers direct current straight to the battery system, bypassing the on-board charger. This makes much higher power levels possible, but requires more expensive equipment, more powerful grid connections, more extensive protection systems and effective heat dissipation.
For this reason, Poland needs several complementary layers:
Home and residential-estate charging — mainly AC, used while the car is parked for many hours.
Workplace charging — allowing energy to be topped up while the car is parked anyway.
Destination charging — at hotels, restaurants, shopping centres, sports venues and service facilities.
Rapid urban and regional stations — needed by drivers without their own parking space, taxis, delivery vans and fleets.
High-power hubs along major routes — enabling efficient intercity travel.
Infrastructure for heavy transport — requiring separate planning, grid connections measured in megawatts and sufficiently large manoeuvring space.
The International Energy Agency points out that home charging will remain the preferred method wherever it is available, primarily because of convenience and the cost of energy. IEA
The public network should therefore not replace private infrastructure. Both systems must develop in parallel.
In a development’s promotional materials, such a phrase may sound unambiguous. From a technical point of view, however, it needs to be spelled out.
Properly preparing a building should include, among other things:
an analysis of current and future energy demand,
an appropriately sized connection capacity,
space in the distribution boards,
cable routes leading to the parking bays,
suitable electrical protection,
the option of individual energy metering,
a user identification system,
communication between the chargers,
dynamic power management,
scope for future expansion,
service and safety procedures,
well-thought-out energy billing rules.
The EU Energy Performance of Buildings Directive defines pre-cabling more broadly than simply leaving an empty conduit. It covers, among other things, cables, cable routes, data transmission and — where appropriate — meters. The direction of EU regulation is for parking spaces in new multi-unit residential buildings to be technically prepared and for at least one charging point to be installed in new buildings subject to specific requirements. EUR-Lex
This is a very important change. Putting in cable routes, a power reserve and space in the distribution board during construction is usually simpler than later digging up the car park surface, running new installations through common areas and increasing the power capacity of the entire building.
Imagine a residential estate with a hundred parking spaces equipped with 11 kW AC points.
If all the devices operated at full power at the same time, the theoretical demand would be:
100 × 11 kW = 1.1 MW.
This does not mean, however, that the estate always needs a grid connection that is a full 1.1 MW larger.
If each car needs to replenish an average of 20 kWh overnight, the total energy demand comes to 2 MWh. Spread over eight hours, that means an average power of around 250 kW.
This is a simplified example, but it clearly shows the difference between:
the sum of the devices’ rated power,
the instantaneous peak load,
the actual amount of energy users need.
This is precisely where dynamic power management comes in. The system can allocate energy to individual vehicles depending on the available reserve, parking duration, current state of charge, declared departure time or user priority.
Instead of letting all the chargers run at full power from 6 pm, the process can be spread across the whole night.
Smart charging makes it possible to shift energy consumption away from peak-load periods. It can also respond to tariffs, local energy generation, the operation of energy storage or the power currently available to the building.
The International Energy Agency notes that smart charging can reduce peak demand by shifting sessions to other times of day. In the future, additional flexibility may come from V2G technology, which allows compatible vehicles to feed some of their energy back into the grid. IEA
In practice, the following will be particularly important:
overnight charging,
workplace charging during daytime photovoltaic generation,
dynamic power limiting during peak periods,
integration with energy storage,
local balancing at building level,
tariffs that encourage flexible consumption.
Photovoltaics will not automatically solve the problem of evening charging on residential estates, as solar output usually peaks earlier in the day. It can, however, work very well with charging at business premises or with energy storage.
A station can be manufactured, delivered and installed relatively quickly. Securing an adequate grid connection, upgrading a transformer, extending a line or obtaining all the necessary technical approvals can take much longer.
In July 2026, agreements were signed for the construction or modernisation of 147 power supply points for zero-emission transport infrastructure. The new and upgraded connections are to have a combined capacity of 493 MW, with funding worth PLN 1.26 billion. The projects cover 13 voivodeships. www.gov.pl
This is an important investment, but also a clear signal: the development of electromobility depends directly on the modernisation of the distribution network.
This does not mean that electric cars are bound to overload the entire system. It does mean, however, that uncontrolled increases in power at individual sites can cause local problems.
Poland therefore needs not only more energy, but also:
better planning of where it is drawn,
modernisation of local networks,
digitalisation of infrastructure,
demand forecasting,
flexible control of loads.
“The most advanced charger cannot deliver more energy than the grid allows. That is why the future of electromobility depends not on individual devices, but on the interplay between the vehicle, the battery, the building and the energy system.”
— Gabriel Markut, CEO of Voltified Energy
A residential car park needs a different kind of infrastructure from a motorway.
The AFIR Regulation requires charging pools to be developed along the trans-European TEN-T network. On the core road network, pools for light-duty electric vehicles are to be located in each direction of travel at intervals of no more than 60 km. By the end of 2027, each such pool should offer at least 600 kW of total power output and include at least two points of at least 150 kW each. eur-lex.europa.eu
In March 2026, GDDKiA (the General Directorate for National Roads and Motorways) reported 493 charging points at motorway service areas (MOPs) and other locations linked to the motorway and expressway network, 222 of which offered 150 kW or more. Further stations were under construction at 40 MOPs, and tenders were planned for another 65 locations. www.gov.pl
AFIR requirements also concern the user experience. New infrastructure must make it possible to charge without first entering into a contract with a specific operator, and prices should be displayed transparently. eur-lex.europa.eu
This matters because a driver should not have to install yet another app and create a new account just to charge on a one-off basis.
One of the most common misconceptions is the assumption that a vehicle connected to a 150 kW station will always charge at 150 kW.
In reality, the figure shown on the device indicates its maximum capability. The actual power of a session depends on, among other things:
the capabilities of the specific car model,
the voltage of the vehicle’s architecture,
the battery’s state of charge,
cell temperature,
the operation of the cooling or heating system,
the manufacturer’s strategy programmed into the BMS,
battery condition,
the limitations of the station itself,
power sharing with other charging bays.
The higher the state of charge, the more often the system limits the power. This is part of the charging characteristics of lithium-ion cells and of the strategy that protects the battery. A battery that is too cold or too hot may also accept energy more slowly. The operator ORLEN Charge states explicitly that charging power depends, among other things, on the car’s specification, the state of charge and the battery temperature. Electric vehicle charging stations
That is why journey times should be assessed on the basis of the entire charging curve, not just the peak value reached for a few minutes.
A battery is not a passive energy tank. It is a complex electrochemical system controlled by the battery management system (BMS).
As a battery ages, the following may change, among other things:
usable capacity,
internal resistance,
voltage behaviour under load,
differences between sections or modules,
the ability to accept high power,
the amount of heat generated.
A single SoH percentage does not always describe the full technical condition of a battery. Diagnostics should also take into account BMS data, voltages, temperatures, fault codes, the operating history available in the vehicle and the behaviour of the system under load and during charging.
This is exactly where infrastructure meets Voltified Energy’s line of work.
An efficient, modern station will not guarantee full power if the vehicle limits it because of temperature, state of charge, battery parameters or the manufacturer’s protective strategy. On the other hand, lower power at a given moment is not automatically proof of a faulty battery.
What is needed is an analysis of the context, not conclusions drawn from a single value shown on the charger’s screen.
Forecasts of vehicle numbers should be matched against the capacity of local networks. Grid operators, local authorities, road authorities, developers and charging operators cannot act completely independently of one another.
A housing estate does not need a motorway hub, and a transit car park cannot rely solely on slow AC points. Power, the number of charging bays and parking duration must be designed together.
Cable routes, space in the distribution board, a metering system and the ability to manage power should be put in place at the construction stage. Retrofitting them later will be more expensive and more complicated.
Not every car needs to draw full power as soon as it is plugged in. For many users, what matters most is that the vehicle is ready by a certain time.
Key indicators should include technical availability, repair time, utilisation, total site power, data accuracy and the success rate of started sessions.
The price should be known before a session starts. Drivers should be able to see the actual availability of a charging bay and pay without signing a long-term contract.
A growing number of points means greater demand for designers, installers, service technicians, energy specialists, battery diagnosticians and cybersecurity professionals.
Charging lorries will require much higher power, suitable parking areas and coordination with drivers’ working hours and companies’ logistics.
According to the Licznik Elektromobilności, 13,731 publicly accessible points were in operation at the end of August 2026. Other registers may report higher figures because of differing methodologies and the inclusion of temporarily unavailable points.
No. In residential buildings, the foundation is usually AC infrastructure combined with dynamic power management. DC is particularly useful where short parking times matter.
Charging power depends on the vehicle’s capabilities, the state of charge, battery temperature, the shape of the charging curve, BMS operation and the power available on the station side.
Not necessarily, provided charging is properly planned and controlled. Local overloading of a particular building, transformer or section of the grid can, however, become a problem, especially when many vehicles start charging at the same time.
A single station can have more than one point, i.e. a position at which a vehicle can be charged. For this reason, the numbers of stations, devices, connectors and points should not be used interchangeably.
At the very least: the ability to extend the installation to the parking bays, an adequate technical reserve, space in the distribution board, a metering system, protection devices, communications and the ability to manage power. The scope should be clearly described in the development’s documentation.
Mature infrastructure will work much like many other systems in our lives: drivers will not have to wonder which operator runs a given location, whether they need yet another app or whether the station will start first time.
Charging should be predictable, accessible and easy to understand.
The slogan spotted at the development near Kraków is therefore a positive signal. It shows that the market is starting to think about electromobility ahead of time. What matters most now is that the word “ready” is backed by specific technical parameters, adequate power and a genuine possibility of expansion.
At Voltified Energy, we see electromobility as a single, interconnected ecosystem. The car, the battery, the charger, the building, the power grid and data cannot develop in isolation.
It is not enough to prepare a space for a charger. We must prepare the entire system for millions of future charging sessions.
A lack of insight into a traction battery’s real condition is turning used-EV trading into something resembling gambling, where everyone loses. Explore the Nobel Prize-winning economic theory and find out how information asymmetry is paralysing electric mobility. See how the BHV analytics engine addresses this problem by turning market uncertainty into hard financial data.
We do not want to wait for electric-car battery standards to be developed outside Poland. We want to help build them. On 3 September 2026, the Voltified Energy team met representatives of the Ministry of Climate and Environment to present its own market research, diagnostic technology, the BHV model and a vision for a safe, transparent used-EV market.
Issue 40/2026 of “Gazeta Ubezpieczeniowa” (a Polish insurance trade newspaper) features an article by Gabriel Markut, CEO of Voltified Energy, on why battery condition matters for the value of an electric car and for claims handling. The piece explains why, in the case of EVs, model year, mileage and a standard inspection are not always enough for a full assessment of a vehicle, and how reliable battery data can support valuation, determining the extent of damage and assessing whether a repair is justified. It is also Voltified Energy’s voice in a broader conversation about the need for common diagnostic standards, transparent reports and better cooperation between technology and the insurance market. As the number of used electric cars grows, this kind of information will become increasingly important for insurers, appraisers, repair shops, dealers and drivers.
