You’ve probably heard the myth that increased EV adoption could strain the grid. Don’t worry. The sky isn’t falling; more EVs on the road won’t cause blackouts, and Bigfoot won’t be an issue for your upcoming camping trip.
Like most urban legends, the “EVs will strain the grid!” story is, thankfully, just a myth, thanks to technological developments like smart EV charging. For EV charging companies, smart EV charging can be the cash cow that increases revenue and brings in new EV buyers year after year.
The More You Know About Smart Charging, The More You Can Save
Smart charging optimizes energy consumption by monitoring, managing, and limiting charging station usage, creating a resilient grid in the process. With enough flexibility to charge all the cars on the road yet maintain grid capacity, smart charging takes advantage of newer technologies that can slow down, speed up, or stop charging depending on the grid’s energy consumption.
Using a smart charging-enabled charging station, you – and your customers – can leverage all the advantages this technology provides. As soon as one of your customers plugs in their vehicle, your EV charger will send data to the provider’s charging management platform seamlessly through the cloud. This data includes not only the customer’s charging time and the speed at which the car charges but also information about the current grid capacity and energy usage.
With this information, your charging network’s operators can regulate energy usage remotely, while your customers can configure their smart charging preferences through whatever app they use to charge their cars and pay for the energy they draw.
Off-Peak Charging Saves Customers Money
With smart charging, users can automatically charge their vehicles during off-peak hours while connected to the grid, shaving dollars off their energy bills with no effort on their part. When demand increases, the car stops charging, providing the grid with enough power to meet local homeowners’ and businesses’ needs during peak hours.
Leverage Renewables to Cut Costs Further
Indeed, providing your customers with the ability to take advantage of smart charging during off-peak hours can earn you more than a few brownie points – and referrals. Customers can choose to charge during slow times and get a bargain on charging their cars.
Advantages of Supplier-Managed Smart Charging
However, there are even more advantages EV charging stations can leverage to cut costs and increase revenue. With smart EV charging capability, your stations can incorporate renewable power sources, such as wind turbines or solar panels, to cut costs even further.
Allowing your supplier to manage your EV charging services allows your local energy provider to use various data sources, like real-time energy production, local consumption rates, and the state of charge of each vehicle your station charges. Even better, you can leverage vehicle-to-grid (V2G) and vehicle-to-building (V2B) charging capabilities to feed energy back into the grid or into your facility’s power supply, allowing you to earn money from your supplier or heat your building during peak hours.
If you’ve incorporated renewables or battery storage, you can use energy from your renewables or storage during peak energy usage times. During low consumption times, you can feed your battery storage system when prices are low.
Extend Your DC Fast Chargers’ Profitability with Smart Charging
As a recent Driivz post points out, public charging stations – especially DC fast charging (DCFC) ones – are money-burning tax write-offs no more. They’ve come of age – and research shows that they’re churning out profits for their owners.
With an average DCFC utilization rate of 15%, the researchers show, each fast charger charged vehicles for about five hours a day. In the second quarter of 2024, the news was even better. EVgo reported that 23% of its fast chargers had a utilization rate that exceeded 30%.
As DC fast chargers demonstrate their profitability, more fueling companies will likely incorporate them into their fueling options, especially those along high-traffic corridors. With more fast chargers on the roads, the word will likely spread that long charging times will soon be a thing of the past.
That’s good news – both for charging station owners and the EV industry as a whole. Faster charging opportunities take away one of the major objections from EV holdouts – that charging time is too slow to make it convenient enough for them to purchase an EV. As DCFCs begin to populate the nation’s truck stops and fuel stations, EV owners will likely become the vehicles’ best salespeople. Enthusiasm, after all, is contagious.
But to eke out even more profits from this fast-growing customer base, DCFC station owners need to ensure that their new chargers enable smart charging. While today’s grid is certainly capable of handling the current load, a leap in EV adoption could cause a temporary drop in charging capacity. With the ability to offer smart charging, though, charging station owners can handle the uptick in the customer base without a hitch. That’s the future outlook – and it’s bright.
Even more important, however, is the operational excellence that smart charging offers right now. With smart charging, charging station owners can take advantage of 24/7 monitoring to detect emerging issues before they even cause problems. Additionally, the latest advances in smart charging technology include “self-healing algorithms,” software programs that can both detect – and fix – most emerging issues. That’s huge – and a key component of the driver confidence that will push EV adoption well into the mainstream.
For EV charging station businesses, these new smart charging benefits can do more than bring in new business. As the Driivz post notes, station managers will notice fewer issues that require onsite repair, reduced downtime, and happier customers making fewer calls to technical support teams.
Drive More Home Charger Business with Residential Smart Charging
It’s not only commercial EV charging stations that can benefit from smart charging. Companies that sell home chargers, too, can drum up more business when customers know they can take advantage of the lower charging rates and other smart charging perks that come with smart charging-enabled EV chargers.
Your residential charging customers will appreciate a smart charging-enabled charger when they discover they have a connection to not only their home’s power supply but, more importantly, the grid itself. Using their mobile app, they can choose to charge automatically when rates are low yet ensure they have enough power to get them through their day.
If they want to store energy in a battery or use their home’s solar panels to pull power from, a smart charger can coordinate with the system to make the most efficient use of all their power sources. Should they want to use their excess energy to power their home or serve as an extra power source in case of an outage, a smart charging-equipped home charger can make EV ownership more convenient than ever.
Deploy Smart Charging in Apartment Buildings and Employee Parking Lots
Keep the lights on in your building while you keep your tenants and employees happy with smart chargers equipped with load-sensing technology. This breakthrough solution monitors your building’s power so tenants and business processes always have an uninterrupted supply even as their cars charge.
Using energy storage systems to provide a backup system onsite can provide peace of mind for your tenants and employees. Knowing that you have them covered during power outages is an amenity that will attract new people and retain existing tenants and employees.
Combine Smart EV Charging with Smart Planning for Success
Offering smart charging opportunities to your customers – whether yours is a commercial or residential operation – is undoubtedly a savvy business strategy. For an investment of only about $1,000, you can connect your customers with cost-saving charging flexibility.
But in today’s world, you can take that connectivity to the next level with a solution that can help you plan your next move in the EV charging universe.
The Center for Sustainable Energy, a non-profit group focused on finding cleaner modes of transportation fueled by sustainable energy sources, has developed Caret, a software tool that helps EV charging infrastructure companies locate ideal locations for their next charging stations.
Pulling from a broad range of data, including the potential area’s annual new EV sales, the types of area charging stations available, the residents’ income levels, and more, the forecasting tool can save EV charging companies time and effort when trying to nail down a site for a new station. With a data-driven approach from construction to services rendered, Caret + smart charging can give new EV charging stations the best start possible.
Fleets, Too, Should Take Advantage of Smart Charging
As more commercial fleets go electric, fleet managers will want to save money by charging their fleet vehicles during off-peak hours. Some seasonal fleets, like school buses and ski transport vehicles, will have extensive downtime during their off seasons. Using the energy in their batteries to feed energy into the grid can produce additional revenue while they are idle.
Fleet management can take advantage of all those benefits by choosing smart charging-capable EV chargers from the outset rather than replacing them later with expensive upgrades. Adding energy storage solutions to the mix, too, can keep the fleet running even during storms or other outages – when they’re likely most needed.
Discover More Cost-Saving Technologies at the EV Charging Summit
It’s almost time for the EV industry’s premier event – the EV Charging Summit. There, you’ll encounter some of the EV world’s top minds – all of whom are excited to share their newest discoveries. Whether your interests lie in the latest smart charging technology or an emissions-free way to transport your school district’s students to school and back, you’ll find a wealth of information among our presenters and vendors.
Don’t wait. Register for your spot at the Summit today!
