According to Arun Mani, who works at PA Consulting Group a management and IT consulting Technology Company as energy and electric vehicles specialist, it is high time for utilities to assume a leadership role in electric vehicle adaptation.
He finds a growing interest among the consumers in the use of electric vehicles assisted by environmental policies of governments to support the growth of EV and suggests that the utilities must avail the opportunity to build trust among the growing EV clients to consolidate their position in the EV market. He suggested that by making investments in the growing EV market, the utilities more than meeting their operational purposes will be in a position to establish themselves strategically in the market by introducing effective EV infrastructure and by providing novel charging models, thus encouraging the customers to adapt to electric vehicles.
Arun Mani, in the process of studying various investment opportunities for investor-owned as well as public utilities performed a research on leading EV infrastructure suppliers and the US utilities have identified three long term strategies that will enable the utilities to be a part of expansion of the EV market. As the first strategy, he suggests the utilities to construct a dependable and flexible infrastructure that can adapt with the changing models of vehicles, EVs from various service areas and countries. It suggests for offering multiple choices for the clients in the construction of EV infrastructure.
Secondly, he wanted the utilities to formulate a commercial charging model to suit the best interests of clients as well as utilities. He suggests the utilities to decide on the use of fee-based, flat-rate or time-of-use models or a combination of them all to meet the requirements of EV users. He suggests that models need to be introduced that can encourage all types of users as well as methods to offer incentives calculating the EV time and period of day/night time usage, which will allow the utilities to make best use of their renewable energy resources.
Lastly he advises the utilities to form their strategies revolving around the behavior of their clients. He suggests that the utilities have an understanding on related aspects such as the number of EVs on the roads within their service areas, the location and number of EV charging facilities and lastly where most of the EVs are likely to get charged.
Source: http://www.paconsulting.com/