Blog Post

Preparing for EV Growth: City Tech and Partners Expand EV Charging Data for Asset Managers

Tom McCoy • Jun 29, 2021
For the first time, many people are imagining themselves behind the wheel of an electric vehicle as prices drop. With rosy growth projections and commitments from major vehicle manufacturers, the shift to EVs is feeling more certain than ever. However, lack of EV infrastructure is the top reason many drivers are hesitant to make the change. They are looking to apartment buildings, retail shops, grocery stores, garages, and other public spaces to provide more places to fuel. How can facility owners and operators prepare for this new reality, allow for flexibility and changes as new information surfaces, and demystify the decisions that go into managing charging infrastructure?

One way to seize electrification opportunities while guarding against the risk of unnecessary or stranded investments is to pursue EV planning in the context of a comprehensive asset strategy. As physical and digital needs evolve, facilities will have to decide how to integrate sensors, analytics, compute and storage, networks, and physical infrastructure (including electricity and other utilities). These components comprise a cyberphysical foundation to capture information and to guide operational decisions. 

Currently, most garage operators have limited charging equipment and little visibility into EV charging utilization across multiple charging platforms and providers. This lack of data prohibits data-driven pricing (static or dynamic) and active space management, which constrains the EV parking/charging market and limits asset owners’ ability to plan for future infrastructure needs. Further, the absence of accurate, real-time charging station availability means that pulling into a garage becomes a roll of the dice for drivers in need of a top off.


To address the opportunities and challenges facing garage operators, City Tech Collaborative (City Tech) collaborated with testbed host Millennium Garages, sensor manufacturer and Tier 1 automotive supplier Bosch USA, parking business intelligence provider Smarking, and EV charging equipment and service provider ChargePoint to build a connected, real-time occupancy monitoring system to improve EV charging space management and related operations.

 

As part of the Millennium Garages pilot, Bosch installed sensors on ten EV charging spots to determine space occupancy, duration, and whether / how long vehicles charged while parked. Smarking was able to then compile this data into a single dashboard and to help facilities operators to visualize, analyze, and understand real-time use of their chargers. By providing a consolidated view of charging activity across multiple chargers and equipment providers for the first time, this approach can take the guesswork out of operational decisions.

 

For Millennium Garages, the largest underground parking garage in the US spanning 3.8 million square feet beneath downtown Chicago, these insights can inform EV pricing, if/when to expand the number of EV parking spaces, and the return on investment for the current EV spaces. These insights are critical whether a facility has three EV spaces or 300.

 


Just three months since the project began, new EV charging analytics are already producing valuable insights that can guide future facility operations and investments. The Smarking dashboard revealed that there were customers charging overnight each night; the team hypothesized that the customers were using the stations to refill after a commute outside of the downtown area – a newly discovered usage pattern. With this new customer segment identified, there are opportunities to explore the market and rethink business models, customer acquisition strategies and pricing models. By identifying shared goals and aligning incentives across pilot partners, this project drove rapid integration and testing of industry-leading capabilities and revealed insights that may have been otherwise overlooked.




The approach and technology from this solution can be applied in several ways going forward. In addition to informing garage operations, this will help with sizing of charging infrastructure, facilitate capital planning, and identify additional opportunities (such as large-scale onsite energy storage) to enable expanded electrification of fleets and larger vehicles, while also incorporating related considerations and benefits (such as local electric grid stability, peak shaving, and demand response). Eventually, newly created occupancy data could be made visible to customers, parking search engines, and EV reservation systems. 

 

Over the coming months, garage operators and other asset managers who are looking to expand EV capabilities can build a foundation for improved operational decisions in the future. Those who do will be able to respond nimbly to new information as EV usage grows. Those who don’t may be left with drivers passing them by.

 


About the Author: Tom McCoy manages the Solution Development process for City Tech. In this role, Tom oversees the development and management of pilot projects, including team formation, scoping, legal negotiation, execution, and evaluation/scaling. Tom has 10 years of experience leading teams to deliver innovative technology solutions in the Pharma, Retail and Consumer Technology industries. Most recently, Tom led a product development team at Nextdoor focused on helping locally owned businesses compete by strengthening their connections to their neighborhoods and local customers. Tom has a bachelor's degree in Industrial Engineering from the University of Wisconsin.


About City Tech Collaborative (City Tech): City Tech is an urban solutions accelerator that tackles problems too big for any single sector or organization to solve alone. City Tech’s work uses IoT sensing networks, advanced analytics, and urban design to create scalable, market ready solutions. Current initiatives address advanced mobility, healthy cities, connected infrastructure, and emerging growth opportunities. City Tech was born and raised in Chicago, and every city is a potential partner. Visit www.CityTech.org and follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn.

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