With record numbers of drivers going electric, now is the time to move if you’re thinking about starting your own EV charging business. But first, learn some EV charging station basics to hit the ground running.
Reliability: The Secret Sauce for EV Charging Success
With only 78% of the nation’s EV chargers providing reliable service, it’s no wonder that Harvard researcher Omar Asensio characterizes the US EV charging scene as “the Wild West.” Asensio’s study also found that Americans have expressed “widespread dissatisfaction with the current state of EV charging infrastructure.”
That’s not old news. The study just came out in June 2024. How can you expand your customer base if word-of-mouth advertising limits the spread of the EV revolution?
As a prospective EV charging station owner, it’s up to you and your fellow station operators to change that statistic. Prioritize reliability, and the positive reputation that follows will keep churning out new EV drivers.
1. Shore Up Reliability Essentials Early On
Early in the planning process, keep these EV charging fundamentals top of mind to ensure that your stations will be the most reliable on the road:
- Purchase high-quality hardware: Resist the temptation to forgo quality to streamline your budget. Look at the long-term usage and reliability you’ll get out of top-of-the-line equipment, and you’ll realize success in the long run.
- Find dependable installation and maintenance professionals: Certification should be the minimum standard. Insist on the best talent available locally — and pay them what they’re worth.
- Track your performance data obsessively: Reliability depends on your team catching minor issues before they morph into big problems. Monitoring your performance and monetization data can alert you to any emerging issues.
- Comply with all pertinent regulations: Whether it’s safety or reliability, ensure that your equipment and personnel are up to code and up to date on compliance issues. Investing in continuing education for yourself and your team will keep you on top of any recent changes.
- Plan to scale upward in the wake of success: You’ve probably heard the adage, “By failing to plan, you’re planning to fail.” If you’ve adhered to these EV charging fundamentals, you should see an uptick in EV adoption, thanks to your station’s reliability. So don’t limit your vision to a few chargers. Invest in enough real estate and financing to expand your reach as your customer base grows.
- Have a plan B for power outages and peak usage times: Investing in on-site distributed energy resources (DERs) to supplement your local power grid is a must for near 100% reliability.
- Determine how best to monetize your investment: Certainly, you’ll make money from customers who pay to charge their EVs at your establishment. However, think outside the box to come up with multiple income streams, and you’ll grow your business faster. Faster growth means more cash to sink into making your charging equipment more efficient and, therefore, more reliable.
- Become a voracious consumer of all things EV charging-related: Research on new technological and other developments in the EV manufacturing and charging industry emerges daily. Subscribe to industry newsletters, attend all the events and trade shows you can, read up on the latest studies, and consume industry white papers to put your charging stations a step ahead of your competition.
2. Choose the Optimum Location for Your Charging Station
After you’ve familiarized yourself and your planning team with the fundamentals, it’s time to find a location that will make your charging station the one locals and travelers alike depend on for reliable charging services. As a Streetlight Data case study points out, you’ll need to look at several data points to find the optimum location for your EV charging station. They include:
- Hourly origin-destination data for your city, suburb, or rural community
- Peak parking times for each potential location
- Demographics of local residents and non-resident travelers
- Location and number of EV charging stations in each prospective location
- Types of vehicles driven in the area
- Commuter traffic vs. local residents
- Types of housing and other buildings in the area
These data can help you determine not only where to locate your charging station but also improve your customer targeting. For example, if one of your potential locations has a lot of commercial vehicles or electric fleet vehicles passing through, you might want to include extra space for these larger vehicles to park and charge.
Similarly, if you plan to locate your station in an area with high-end shopping centers or office buildings, consider offering upscale dining inside your station so that customers can relax with a gourmet meal while their cars charge.
If you plan to build adjacent to a freeway, including reliable DC fast chargers in your charging options could be a wise use of your funds. If, on the other hand, you want to locate near multi-family housing or business complexes, a large number of Level 2 chargers might be a better option since residents need to charge their vehicles overnight or while they work.
3. Maximize Reliability with Networked Chargers
As a Blink Charging post put it, “A non-networked charger is like a bottle of water left on a front porch.” In other words, anyone can “drink” an unlimited amount of the energy from it at any time. Networked charging stations allow you to control access to your chargers, how long a driver can charge, when they can charge, and how much they must pay to operate the chargers.
When you use network chargers, you also can analyze the data, helping you provide your customers with better, more reliable service. Even better, networked chargers can reduce the likelihood of someone hogging the charger for hours and depriving other customers of your charging services.
4. Enable EV Roaming for the Ultimate in Reliability
When you enable EV roaming, your charging station can accommodate drivers from all over the country no matter what EV charging network they hold membership in. This technology allows them to use one authorization and method across all networks, simplifying the process and eliminating the hassle of driving all over town to find a compatible network charger.
Using four standardized protocols, your chargers can communicate with all your prospective networks. These protocols include the following:
- ISO 15118: This protocol enables EVs to communicate with your charging stations. Even better, if you want your customers to be able to utilize the benefits of vehicle-to-grid (V2G) technology, this protocol allows you to do just that.
- Open Charge Point Interface (OCPI): This communication protocol facilitates communication among various charging networks so that drivers can use chargers outside of their network.
- Open Automated Demand Response (OADR): OADR allows your charging stations to automatically adjust the energy they consume by communicating with your utility provider to ensure adequate power to charge vehicles even during peak demand hours.
- Open Charge Point Protocol (OCPP): OCPP enables charging stations to communicate with network software. Better yet, it allows network managers to obtain software and hardware from various manufacturers. Not only does this protocol empower EV charging businesses to compare prices without worrying about compatibility, but it also assures them that even if a provider goes out of business, they could obtain the same part or software from another company.
5. Guard Against Power Outages by Managing Electricity Capacity Costs
Maintaining grid reliability during high-demand times assures your EV charging business — and other companies that depend on high levels of electricity — that there will be enough electricity to power them all, as a Shipley Energy post points out. To that end, utility companies measure your stations’ electricity consumption on high-usage days and create a “capacity tag” that records your usage during that time.
Using that tag, the company bills you accordingly. The more electricity you use, the higher capacity costs you’ll pay.
As the Shipley Energy post puts it, capacity charges serve “as insurance against power outages,” which otherwise might happen during peak hours. Utility companies use the funds from capacity costs to purchase multiple energy sources, ensuring that their customers will have power to rely on, even during high-usage times.
To reduce capacity costs, you can start by purchasing only the most energy-efficient equipment, including lighting, computers, and HVAC components. Furthermore, using renewables and vehicle-to-grid technology as backup power sources during peak hours can also shave those costs. Charge less for customers who charge during off-peak hours, too, and your capacity costs will go down.
6. Fortify Your Funding with Grants and Other Federal Assistance
No matter how solid your financing is, a little extra in your back pocket can help you handle unexpected issues. Federal assistance can provide that surplus that allows your fledgling business to deal with emergencies, fund alternative energy sources, and meet any new regulations that arise.
Federal programs are available to EV charging infrastructure companies and other clean energy providers, especially those that plan to locate in urban centers where air pollution inhibits residents’ health, as well as along interstate corridors where travelers need dependable charging facilities.
If you plan to locate your stations in underserved areas, such as rural locations or low-income urban communities, you can apply for federal grants to cover some of your expenses.
7. Prepare to Succeed by Attending the Next EV Charging Summit Event
Want more in-depth information to help you get your EV charging business off to a roaring start? Come to the EV Charging Summit, where you can take a deep dive into all these topics and more.
Register for both workshops and our regular sessions separately and get a double dose of expertise to fuel your success. Reserve your seat at the table today!
