7 tips to avoid charging piles at your location

More and more venues are purchasing electric charging stations to service their guests with electric cars. In the podcasts with Rianne Adelaar of BCN and Boudewijn Boeve of Engie, you can hear that there is a limit to the number of charging stations a venue can handle.

This has to do with the amount of power the building can provide. So charging poles are regularly occupied and venues are looking for ways to serve all guests. Above all, they want to avoid "charging station life" - keeping a charging spot occupied while the car is already sufficiently charged.

How can you avoid charging piles at your location? Here are 7 tips:

1. Hanging up note asking not to tack

First, a very simple tip. Hang a note asking people to move the car to a regular parking space if the car is full. You can also communicate the message via a sign at reception or a screen. Electric car owners will thus get a reminder to move their car after filling up. If you communicate the message in a place where people often walk by, for example during lunch, electric drivers are even more likely to be reminded.

2. Set a daypart as standard

Following tip 1, you can specify that electric cars are basically allowed to be charged for half a day. Regular guests will quickly pick up on this and accept it as the norm. Soon they will point out to others that this norm applies to this location. At some point, the rule is generally accepted and guests are likely to be happy with this clarity.

3. Waiting list at reception

Actually, this is not a tip against charging pole life, but a tip to ensure charging poles are well occupied. The tip comes from BCN Rotterdam. At their Rotterdam branch, guests can tell the reception that they want to charge their car but that the charging poles are occupied. They give their phone number to the reception. When the reception sees that a charging station becomes free, they call the top number on the list. That guest can then charge his/her car at the charging station.

4. Charging station Parking disc

A parking disc, but to indicate until when you are at the charging station. An original solution offered by Engie to its customers. Just like a normal parking disc, you can indicate the time. However, in this case it does not indicate when you arrived, but until when you occupied the charging station. The disc also has space for your phone number. You then offer the other person the opportunity to contact you about exactly when you are moving the car. To clearly distinguish it from the "normal" parking disc, it is not blue but green. Extra handy: if you turn the parking disc around, you can use it as a normal, blue parking disc.

5. Own charge cards

Your charging station supplier may be able to offer you its own charging passes. Engie at least offers that possibility, Boudewijn Boeve tells us in a podcast with Worldmeetings.com. The location can set in the charging stations' back office system whether all charging passes are allowed, or only with charging passes owned by the location. For example, the venue puts 10 passes at the reception desk. They give those to their guests. And only with those specific charge passes can the charge posts be used.

However, the venue does have to decide how they want to settle with the customer in this case. Because the cost of the power will then basically be borne by the venue. The venue can decide to offer the power as a free service. But it can also charge the consumption to the customer afterwards.

6. Time rates

With this option, the person occupying the charging spot pays more the longer he occupies the spot. That is, when the car is full. From then on, the "sticker" pays an amount per minute. Time charges thus provide a financial incentive to drive the car away from the charging spot on time. Locations have the option to set this in the back office of their charging station system.

7. Own app

Electric car owners can install an app to see how much their car has been charged. This tip is for charging station users. Watch your app to see if your car is sufficiently full and then move it. In addition to apps from manufacturers, there is the app Kilowatt for iPhone and Smoov for Android devices. If you have other suggestions for apps, let us know in a comment.