In November 2019, Smart Electric Power Alliance (SEPA) published a report called “Residential Electric Vehicle Time-Varying Rates That Work” which explores the current state of EV charging rates for municipally-owned, investor owned and cooperative utilities. We encourage you to read the entire report, as there are many insights into what drives rate adoption. The report’s lead, Erika Myers of SEPA, will be speaking about the report at the DISTRIBUTECH conference in San Antonio later this month.

The report compares a wide number of approaches from Time of Use Rates to subscription programs, and includes Sagewell’s own Bring Your Own Charger® (BYOC) program. In fact, of the 50 utilities with EV rates in the study, 10% use BYOC.

Twenty utilities shared information about the percentage of eligible EV drivers that have enrolled in an EV rate. Across all of them, the average enrollment rate is 21%, but one program nearly quadruples that rate: Braintree Electric Light Department’s BYOC program!

BYOC is the only solution profiled by SEPA that is based on AMI disaggregation. Whole home time of use rates have very low adoption rates (unless made mandatory) because customers are not willing to shift all of their use. Separately metered or sub-metered EV rates also have low adoption, often because the utility has the customer pay for installation, or the extra work of having the meter installed is greater than the perceived benefit. Our analysis of the separately metered EV Time of Use rate of one of the utilities that participated in the study demonstrated that the rate only shifted 50% of EV charging to off-peak hours, while BYOC shifts 95%.

Not only does BYOC have the highest penetration rate (on average 50%), and higher load shifting, the lack of hardware means the costs of the program are lower than the alternatives as well. Contact Sagewell today to see how BYOC can help your utility shift EV load. We’re able to launch the program within 30 days!