A charging station with little use: why it doesn't earn and what to do

You invested in the charger, it's switched on, and the month's statement came in small. Before concluding that the point has no future, separate what belongs to the location from what belongs to the operation. The location changes little after the construction work. The operation can change the following week, and that is where the most common causes of an idle charging station are.

Start with your point's numbers

The payment operator's statement or the charger's system already brings almost everything. Pull five numbers from at least one month:

• Sessions per day, and on which days of the week.
• Session times: in which part of the day the point is used and in which it sits empty.
• kWh per session: very short sessions may indicate an interrupted charge.
• Hours offline: how long the charger was unavailable.
• Unsuccessful attempts: sessions started that delivered no energy, if the system shows them.

With these numbers, each cause below leaves a sign you can check.

The six most common causes

1. The charger stops and no one finds out

The sign: full days with no session in the middle of normal weeks, or a driver complaint before any warning.

A stopped charger generates no session, and the driver who finds the point offline once tends to choose another next time. The fix begins with knowing about the stoppage the moment it happens. The step by step for the diagnosis is in the charging station stopped: what to check. An alert for a stopped charger helps catch this early, and the Velquia blog has a list of what to require of a system before signing a contract: how to choose charging station management software.

2. The driver can't find the point

The sign: few sessions from new people, even with the charger working.

Those who drive electric look for charging in apps, in charging maps and on Google. A point with no listing, with the wrong hours, an old photo or a status that doesn't match the charger loses the driver before they leave home. Check how your point appears in the apps that show charging stations and in the location's Google profile, and whether the space is easy to find on arrival.

3. The price is the same all day

The sign: short peaks of use and hours in a row with no session at all.

A single price treats the rush hour and the empty small hours the same. A time-of-use tariff, like the night rate, is a way to bring drivers into the idle hours without touching the margin of the busy hours. The price also needs to talk to that of the charging stations around, because the driver compares before leaving.

4. The energy comes at the full tariff

The sign: the point has use, but little is left from each kWh sold.

In this case the problem is more in the cost than in the traffic. Distributed-generation energy credits, provided for in Law 14,300/2022, are a path to lowering the kWh cost. At our points we use solar-generation energy credits, with a per-kWh cost lower than the utility's tariff.

5. No one helps whoever has a problem

The sign: unsuccessful attempts in the statement, or reviews on the location's profile that mention the charger.

The driver who can't start the charge wants to talk to someone right then. If the phone they find is the establishment's, whoever answers is someone from your team, who usually has no way to solve it. Define who answers, through which channel and at what hours, and leave the contact written on the charger.

6. Nothing brings the driver back

The sign: many different drivers and few who return.

Whoever charges near home or work can become a weekly customer. Charging plans and a referral program give a reason to come back to the same point instead of going to the one next door. If the system shows it, track how many of the month's sessions came from someone who had charged before.

How much an idle hour costs

The math is your point's, with your numbers. Take the average sessions per hour in the time when the charger is usually used, multiply by the average kWh per session and by the margin of each kWh. The result is how much each offline hour costs at that time. Multiply by the month's offline hours and you have the size of cause 1. The complete revenue formula is in how much a charging station earns.

Adjusting it yourself or handing over the management

The six causes have fixes, and much of it is routine: looking at the point every day, adjusting the price by time, helping the driver, checking the transfer. You can do it yourself, if someone on your team has time for it. In Elektro Charge management, your point enters the same platform on which we operate our network, and the management fronts are these:

• AI monitoring: the platform warns you when a charger stops or when something strays from the pattern.
• Competition in the region: occupancy by day and time, charges and peak hours of the charging stations around.
• Data-guided price and hours: a time-of-use tariff, like the night rate, and plans and referrals to bring the driver back.
• Cheaper energy: the path of solar energy credits, studied for your point.
• 24-hour driver support: it's us they call.
• Checked transfer: what came in is reconciled with the payment operator, and the transfer is calculated every month, with the report for your point.

They cover causes 1, 3, 4, 5 and 6. Cause 2, listing the point in the apps and in the Google profile, stays with you.

The first step is the study of the point, with the usage data you already have. In our network there have already been more than 4,300 charges and more than 100,000 kWh delivered. What falls to each side is agreed beforehand, in writing.