Having accurate data can make or break your EV charging business. Let’s dive into all the ways the right EV charging data can help better your bottom line.
1. Accurate Data Plays a Critical Role in Seamless EV Charging Performance
As a Field Advantage post points out, “Customers won’t notice uptime, but they will remember when your locations are experiencing outages or downtime.” So true.
But that’s not all. Dissatisfied customers will likely find it so inconvenient that they’ll spread the word to their EV-owning friends. And, with everyone doomscrolling online 24/7, they might even post a scathing review online.
That’s where data can swoop in to rescue your business. From the first baseline readout to regular reports, your data can serve as a barometer of your hardware and software’s health.
Having robust software that can spit out accurate information can make the difference between your company’s success or failure. Without precise data, detecting and repairing issues that cause downtime can take way longer than it should, costing your business time and money.
In addition to your internal data, it’s essential to have an accurate measure of your internet connectivity. No matter how well you keep track of your own systems, significant internet downtime can negatively impact customer experience. Know when you need to switch to a more dependable internet provider before it causes issues for your customers.
2. Data Analysis Drives High-Performance EV Charging
If you have accurate data but can’t use it to find the answers you need to boost uptime, it’s time to look for an analytics-driven energy management system (EMS) that can locate the right data, detect problems, and find solutions quickly and efficiently. Such a system can deliver the right amount of energy to charge a vehicle without overloading circuits or exceeding demand limits.
In addition, the right EMS can calculate your chargers’ KPIs, identifying any faults in your equipment. With easy-to-understand data visualizations, the system can communicate the information to your team, allowing you to tweak your charging stations to achieve optimum performance.
3. Data-Driven Reliability as a Service (RaaS) Keeps Your Stations Running
If your primary business is something other than EV charging, you might not have the personnel or the time to handle the complexities of troubleshooting issues in your equipment or software. With the rise in EV adoption, a new field in the EV industry has opened up to help businesses exactly like yours: reliability as a service.
Instead of hiring a team of EV equipment and software technicians on top of the money you’ve spent on EV charging infrastructure, you can pay for a subscription that covers maintenance, technical support, uptime reporting, software access, and data insights for each charging station and your entire charging station network.
With over one-fourth of the nation’s EV chargers still falling victim to software inaccuracies, you want yours to stay out of that number. These inaccuracies lead to customer frustration, whether it’s with “ghost stations” that appear to be online but aren’t, “zombie stations” that say they’re offline but actually work, or “dead-end stations” that indicate they’re operational but fail to charge your customers’ cars.
With a RaaS service’s help, you can have the software accuracy that only timely updates and trained technicians can provide without hiring additional teams. For restaurants, existing gas stations adding EV chargers to their fueling services, grocery stores, or other retail shops, having such a service provides an amenity your customers will come to rely on – and bring others along with them, all without the expense of recruiting, hiring, and training new teams.
4. Boost Revenue and Stay Ahead of the Competition with Real Utilization Data
Only 30% of all the nation’s EV charging stations do 80% of the charging activity. Why? As a Stable Auto piece points out, the other 70% miss out on increased profitability by not deploying software solutions that can evaluate your site and network operations to find underperforming equipment and workflows.
Analyzing your data through an AI-driven analytics platform can help you predict utilization rates, EV charging demand, energy costs, and demand charges in mere minutes. That speed, plus AI’s ability to analyze, predict, and suggest solutions, can put you in that 30% of successful charging stations.
Having such an AI-powered solution is even more critical if your company’s primary focus is something other than EV charging. Without a dedicated cadre of IT professionals, data analysts, and EV charging infrastructure technicians to sift through data, discover inefficiencies, and suggest solutions, your chargers could face stiff competition from companies whose revenue comes solely from EV charging. AI can put you back into the game on equal footing.
5. Rely on Data-Driven Decisions to Scale Your Business
As EV adoption increases, you’ll likely want to expand your business to meet your growing customer base’s needs. You might even want to expand your offerings to include medium- and heavy-duty commercial vehicle charging as fleets begin to see the many benefits of electrification.
An energy management system that creates reports for each team leader can zero in on the data each team needs to improve its performance and, eventually, play its part in your company’s expansion.
For example, as you plan your expansion, your marketing team will need specific data on the advantages the expansion will bring to your customers. Your charging operations team, on the other hand, will need the technical data they’ll need to incorporate the new charging equipment into your networks. Technical support teams will need all the specs on new hardware and software, while your financial teams will need data that can help them predict the potential return on your investment (ROI) the expansion can bring.
Armed with this information, your teams can come to planning meetings with pertinent data to help you strategize how best to move forward with future expansions. Furthermore, your infrastructure and software teams can alert you well ahead of time if aging equipment or software could be an issue as you integrate your new stations into your inventory.
6. Use Customer and Geographical Data to Identify Promising New Sites
Whether you’re looking at installing your first EV charging station or choosing the site for your latest addition to a massive network, you’ll need accurate, recent data to find the right spot for your station.
Identifying customer interest in a community you’re considering should be your first consideration. Researching factors that impact customer interest, such as income levels, EV ownership, types of available housing, charging preferences, and habits, can help you narrow down your list of possible sites.
Once you’ve found a community that can support a robust EV charging business, you’ll need to use geographical data to find the best location within that community to build your charging stations. Finding a well-traveled route with plenty of EV traffic is only the start.
Finding flat areas for station installation, easy access to water, if you plan to have other amenities, such as a snack shop and restrooms, and enough acreage to accommodate expansion should all factor into your decision. If you don’t plan any extra amenities, finding a location near other amenities, such as shopping centers, restaurants, or parking lots, can help you attract customers.
7. Look at Use Case Data to Drive Infrastructure Decisions
The type of facility in which you plan to install your charging stations can help you determine what kind(s) of EV charging stations will work best for you. For example, if you plan to add charging stations to your apartment building’s parking lots or garages, Level 2 chargers will likely be your best option since your tenants or condo owners will want to charge their cars overnight.
Similarly, if you’re a developer planning single-family housing builds, you can add extra value to prospective buyers by installing Level 2 EV chargers or EV-ready infrastructure in the new homes’ garages. Hotels, too, often install Level 2 chargers, allowing travelers to charge their cars overnight before the next leg of their trip.
Shopping centers, movie theaters, and restaurants often serve as convenient top-off spots for customers, making them ideal locations for Level 2 chargers. However, some forward-thinking shopping centers are starting to incorporate DC fast chargers in their inventory, allowing their customers to fully charge their cars while doing business inside the store. Since many shopping centers have gas stations on-site, it only makes sense for them to give their EV-driving customers the same opportunity for a fast fill-up as their gas-driving counterparts.
Discover More Ways to Boost Your Bottom Line at the EV Charging Summit
If you’re looking to boost your EV charging company’s bottom line, you need all the information you can get. At the EV Charging Summit, you’ll hear from many of the top names in the industry, sharing their secrets for success with you and your fellow EV charging professionals.
With pre-Summit workshops where you can network with presenters afterwards and lecture series geared to specific industry interests, you and your teams can soak up all the information you need to make your EV charging business a success. Register for your spot today!
