Build it (cheap) and they will come

or how reduced price charging isn't always the solution.

I was at the MOVE Conference last week facilitating one of the streams in the energy and charging theatre.

Amongst the sessions held during the stream there were two different panel discussions or presentations which, at their core, put forward the idea that if you reduce the price of something more people will use it.

In one session data were presented that indicated a large increase in charging usage when time-of-day tariffs were introduced. If you reduce the tariff by a large percentage lots more people will charge at that time. If you reduce the tariff by a small percentage some more people will charge at that time.

The utilisation issue

Photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash

We hear time and time again from charge point operators that the way for them to guarantee lower prices for public charging is to increase their utilisation. The more people that use the chargers in a given period, the lower the cost per kWh of energy can be.

It’s very tempting to look at this and think ‘Well, if they reduced their prices in the first place the utilisation would increase and the price would drop as a result’

But, unfortunately, it doesn’t quite work that way. It’s to do with the way statistics work coupled with the way finance works.