Eliminating the speedbumps in EV charging station buildout

athima tongloom/Getty Images

 

Connecting state and local government leaders

COMMENTARY | Energy management as a service gives EV charging station operators cloud-based tools for remote asset management and will help ensure they have the data to comply with the government’s 97% station uptime requirement.

Among the many infrastructure investment opportunities available through the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021, expanding electric vehicle charging stations in the United States offers a unique, multi-faceted value proposition. It can help boost economic development by increasing mobility, attracting investment and creating new jobs. Furthermore, more EV charging stations will lead to EVs on the road, which will help reduce carbon emissions and improve air quality. 

Building a network of fast charging stations is a priority of the Biden administration. The federal government's Joint Office of Energy and Transportation has recently announced a $2.5 billion Charging and Fueling Infrastructure (CFI) Discretionary Grant Program and the $5 billion National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) Formula Program. The first funding round from these programs supports deployment of DC fast chargers across the country at 50-mile intervals along major highways.

This is great news for jurisdictions looking to expand their charging infrastructure. But it comes with a caveat. CFI and NEVI fund recipients and subrecipients will have to contend with operational and systemic problems that plague existing public EV charging infrastructure that has created inconsistent station performance and poor driver experiences. Case in point: A 2022 study in the San Francisco Bay Area found that over 27% of public chargers were non-functioning, and almost 23% had “unresponsive or unavailable screens, payment system failures, charge initiation failures, network failures, or broken connectors.” This tracks with conversations I’ve had with electrical contractors who work on EV stations. One claimed to have 2,000 open trouble tickets.

EV station research has identified four “culprits” impacting station performance:

  • Equipment problems. Issues include faulty kiosk screens that are crucial for communicating charging information to drivers, broken vehicle connector plugs that render the charging port useless, faulty payment systems and inconsistent current flow that can significantly increase overall charging time. 
  • Software incompatibility between charging stations and EVs. Charging stations are software driven, and while protocols exist, there are still no common standards or requirements that any standard be followed. Incompatibility between station and vehicle software can create faulty communication between the station and the car. This can cause the amount of electricity delivered during a charging session to fluctuate—slowing down the session, with no notification to the driver.
  • Lack of local station attendees to troubleshoot problems. EV charging stations are designed to be always on and operate autonomously—somewhat like ATMs. This works fine until it doesn’t. When an outage or performance issue occurs, a truck will have to be dispatched to perform repairs and maintenance and to assess equipment condition. With highway stations spaced at 50 mile intervals, the time and cost of servicing stations can be considerable.
  • Lack of independent station performance data. To make navigating the capricious state of EV charging infrastructure even more challenging, the Biden administration is mandating that charging stations receiving federal money must achieve better than 97% “uptime” (the percentage of time a charger is operational). Today, verification of a charging network’s uptime is a self-reporting honor system. There are no external systems in place for monitoring and verification and no aggregate data that can help establish benchmarks for a satisfactory charging experience. 

These challenges are real and daunting, but fortunately, there is a technological solution that can address all of them: cloud-based energy management as a service. 

EMaaS is software as a service for remote energy asset monitoring and management. EMaaS also enables orchestration of multiple charging station assets, including connectors, displays, payments systems and EV communications as well as batteries, rectifiers, HVACs, and generators. It works with grid, solar and/or wind energy sources and with the charging station’s existing components, internet-of-things based sensor devices and mobile communications. EMaaS also provides operators with real-time status reporting on all critical station functions so they can quickly identify and respond to station issues.

EMaaS also harvests and analyzes energy asset metadata, as well as operational and performance data, to inform artificial intelligence and machine learning models that enable predictive maintenance to help reduce station downtime.

This data harvesting also can also help jurisdictions meet the rigorous data reporting requirements mandated by both CFI And NEVI. The Biden administration, along with many states, plan to collect data to create a national database and analytics platform. The reporting will require detailed station information, including data on charging station uptime, the cost of electricity to operate as well as maintenance and repair costs. Operators will have to report—by charging station port and by charging session—charging session start time, end time, successful completion (yes or no), energy (kWh) dispensed and peak session power (kW) by port. 

Gathering all of the necessary data and ensuring its accuracy and completeness will be time-consuming and resource intensive. Currently, few operators have the data capture and analysis capabilities to comply with these requirements, and getting there will be a scramble. 

By using EMaaS, station operators and the agencies they work for will have all of the required reporting data readily available without having to conduct multiple, manual audits and data aggregation. As the software is open-standards based, data can be ingested, analyzed and presented in any format required by local, state or federal agencies—from dynamic visual dashboards to printed compliance reports.

EMaaS offers additional benefits, including remote asset orchestration to reduce operational costs, improve lifecycle management and track carbon footprint reduction. Further, being cloud- and open standards-based, the software is hardware agnostic, flexible and highly scalable. As such, operators of all sizes can deploy remote monitoring immediately as they roll out stations and scale use easily as the number of stations grows. 

Jurisdictions pursuing CFI and NEVI funding to build EV charging stations should evaluate the benefits and considerations of using cloud-based EMaaS as their mechanism for monitoring and reporting station performance. Designing station networks with remote asset management and orchestration will help ensure they stay ahead of performance issues to meet the government’s 97% station uptime requirement. Robust data capture, analytics and visualization will allow them to flow that data easily into their program compliance reports to meet federal and governments’ rigorous reporting requirements.

Frederick Reynolds is vice president marketing at Galooli Inc.

X
This website uses cookies to enhance user experience and to analyze performance and traffic on our website. We also share information about your use of our site with our social media, advertising and analytics partners. Learn More / Do Not Sell My Personal Information
Accept Cookies
X
Cookie Preferences Cookie List

Do Not Sell My Personal Information

When you visit our website, we store cookies on your browser to collect information. The information collected might relate to you, your preferences or your device, and is mostly used to make the site work as you expect it to and to provide a more personalized web experience. However, you can choose not to allow certain types of cookies, which may impact your experience of the site and the services we are able to offer. Click on the different category headings to find out more and change our default settings according to your preference. You cannot opt-out of our First Party Strictly Necessary Cookies as they are deployed in order to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting the cookie banner and remembering your settings, to log into your account, to redirect you when you log out, etc.). For more information about the First and Third Party Cookies used please follow this link.

Allow All Cookies

Manage Consent Preferences

Strictly Necessary Cookies - Always Active

We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.

Sale of Personal Data, Targeting & Social Media Cookies

Under the California Consumer Privacy Act, you have the right to opt-out of the sale of your personal information to third parties. These cookies collect information for analytics and to personalize your experience with targeted ads. You may exercise your right to opt out of the sale of personal information by using this toggle switch. If you opt out we will not be able to offer you personalised ads and will not hand over your personal information to any third parties. Additionally, you may contact our legal department for further clarification about your rights as a California consumer by using this Exercise My Rights link

If you have enabled privacy controls on your browser (such as a plugin), we have to take that as a valid request to opt-out. Therefore we would not be able to track your activity through the web. This may affect our ability to personalize ads according to your preferences.

Targeting cookies may be set through our site by our advertising partners. They may be used by those companies to build a profile of your interests and show you relevant adverts on other sites. They do not store directly personal information, but are based on uniquely identifying your browser and internet device. If you do not allow these cookies, you will experience less targeted advertising.

Social media cookies are set by a range of social media services that we have added to the site to enable you to share our content with your friends and networks. They are capable of tracking your browser across other sites and building up a profile of your interests. This may impact the content and messages you see on other websites you visit. If you do not allow these cookies you may not be able to use or see these sharing tools.

If you want to opt out of all of our lead reports and lists, please submit a privacy request at our Do Not Sell page.

Save Settings
Cookie Preferences Cookie List

Cookie List

A cookie is a small piece of data (text file) that a website – when visited by a user – asks your browser to store on your device in order to remember information about you, such as your language preference or login information. Those cookies are set by us and called first-party cookies. We also use third-party cookies – which are cookies from a domain different than the domain of the website you are visiting – for our advertising and marketing efforts. More specifically, we use cookies and other tracking technologies for the following purposes:

Strictly Necessary Cookies

We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.

Functional Cookies

We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.

Performance Cookies

We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.

Sale of Personal Data

We also use cookies to personalize your experience on our websites, including by determining the most relevant content and advertisements to show you, and to monitor site traffic and performance, so that we may improve our websites and your experience. You may opt out of our use of such cookies (and the associated “sale” of your Personal Information) by using this toggle switch. You will still see some advertising, regardless of your selection. Because we do not track you across different devices, browsers and GEMG properties, your selection will take effect only on this browser, this device and this website.

Social Media Cookies

We also use cookies to personalize your experience on our websites, including by determining the most relevant content and advertisements to show you, and to monitor site traffic and performance, so that we may improve our websites and your experience. You may opt out of our use of such cookies (and the associated “sale” of your Personal Information) by using this toggle switch. You will still see some advertising, regardless of your selection. Because we do not track you across different devices, browsers and GEMG properties, your selection will take effect only on this browser, this device and this website.

Targeting Cookies

We also use cookies to personalize your experience on our websites, including by determining the most relevant content and advertisements to show you, and to monitor site traffic and performance, so that we may improve our websites and your experience. You may opt out of our use of such cookies (and the associated “sale” of your Personal Information) by using this toggle switch. You will still see some advertising, regardless of your selection. Because we do not track you across different devices, browsers and GEMG properties, your selection will take effect only on this browser, this device and this website.