Public sentiment can be unpredictable, not least of all when it comes to optional utility load management programs. While many members might care about helping their community by staggering EV charging, practical worries (like waking up to a car at 20% battery) and poor experiences can get in the way of altruism.
How you shape your managed EV charging program will dictate whether members actually sign up, and whether they stay enrolled. Here's what we've learned from working with co-ops across the country.
Read more: How to identify EV chargers on your grid using meter data →
The "make or break" areas
We can group the main causes of non-participation or churn into four main areas: eligibility, enrollment, ongoing experience, and operational visibility. Co-ops should be careful to address each of these areas and make sure there are no weak links before launching a managed EV charging program.
Appropriately-sized eligibility conditions
Eligibility conditions that are too narrow or complicated can bar members from participating. Members have limited time to pore over lists of criteria to determine whether they can enroll in a program, and the administrative burden can leave out good-fit candidates.
On the other hand, setting too broad of eligibility conditions can lead members to participate in a program that isn't a good fit for them. For example, it's useful to specify the expected time window that EVs won't be able to charge. If a member works odd hours, they might not realize their EV usage is incompatible with the program until after they've enrolled. That's a bad experience for the member and for program administrators.
The following questions may be relevant as you develop your list of eligibility conditions:
- Are there any EV manufacturers that need to be specifically excluded from the program (usually for technical reasons)?
- Will the program support plug-in hybrid vehicles, or exclusively fully electric cars?
- Are you anticipating a specific daily time window when vehicles will charge?
- What equipment will the member need?
- What telemetry data or other information will the member be required to share in order to participate?
- Will participants need to time charging cycles on their own, or will their charger automatically turn off and on?
Frictionless enrollment flows
Friction in an enrollment flow can prevent program sign-ups, a phenomenon that has been studied even in vital programs like food aid. Of course you need to collect some amount of information from prospective participants, but it's important to keep member experience in mind.
Consider alternatives if your enrollment flow asks members to create a new online account or scan and upload a large amount of documentation when applying. You may also find it valuable to look at the accessibility and user experience of the website you're using for sign-ups. A website that anyone can use and that's free of annoyances and bugs will be much more likely to retain potential participants.
Seamless participant experience
Once you've successfully enrolled your participants, their experience with the technology and operations will determine whether they participate begrudgingly or enthusiastically.
The technology side is easy to appreciate. On a large scale, participants need to be able to trust that their car will charge appropriately overnight. Even a single day where a member wakes up to a car at 20% battery capacity can cause that member to churn from your program. It's wise to set up failsafes to guard against these kinds of scenarios, and to monitor the program thoroughly (we'll talk about monitoring more in the next section).
Smaller points of technological friction can also impact participation. If a member needs access to a specialized app in order to participate, and that app has a burdensome login process, that in itself could be enough to cause that member to drop out. Keeping in touch with members is a good way of finding these friction points.
On the operations side, clear communication is key. In addition to onboarding materials, send updates if you're changing the charging schedule, ramp speeds, eligibility criteria for new participants, or any other substantive part of the program. Monthly or quarterly updates on program success can also inspire members to view their participation more enthusiastically.
Many co-ops find members are most eager about billing rebates or cash incentives. If you're offering incentives, be clear about expectations:
- Are any overrides allowed?
- How do those overrides affect the incentive?
- In what form is the incentive provided, and how often?
- Will the incentive change over time?
Comprehensive operational visibility
On the back end, seamless participant experience is facilitated by reporting and operational visibility. If you don't know what's going on at any given moment, you won't catch issues until they've already impacted participant trust.
At minimum, you should be able to see real-time status information about all of the chargers participating in the program. Hopefully, the tooling you're using will also allow you to quickly generate reports and analysis, identifying chargers that are unexpectedly idle, in use, or offline.
Ideally, you'll also have the ability to configure automatic alerts whenever an anomaly is detected. Paired with on-call support rotations, these alerts allow you to fix a problem before the member sees an undercharged EV in the morning.
Know that traditionally, this operational setup is more complicated the more manufacturers your program supports. If you're looking to add new OEMs to your charging program, Texture can help streamline the integration process and boost operational visibility. We're building the operating system for the energy grid, and we continually roll out new features that make life easier for co-ops building initiatives like managed EV charging programs.
Bringing it all together
Each of the four areas we've covered is important in its own right for designing a successful managed EV charging program, but they don't exist in a vacuum. Even if you have the most stellar enrollment flow known to man, you'll lose participant trust if a charger malfunction slips through undetected, or if incentive criteria is unclear.
To ensure members remain active participants in the program, work through every category in the list. Make sure your eligibility criteria is appropriately sized and understandable; build user-friendly enrollment flows; pay attention to the ongoing participant experience; and monitor devices in real time.
