Smart Charging Survey by Prof Contance Crozier

Published

December 27, 2023

0. Access the Files

Surveys Survey (Prolific) Survey (sMedia)
Variables Variables (Prolific) Variables (sMedia)
Results Raw Results

1. Summary

This survey conducted by Prof Constance Crozier in 2022 is highly inclusive. It contains a well-structured collection of people’s opinions regarding Smart Charging and V2G. The survey consists of 4 sections:

  1. Basic EV ownership questions.
  2. Educational information about smart charging and V2G.
  3. Users’ preferences regarding smart charging and V2G, including:
    1. Charging control
    2. Operational compromises
    3. Incentives
  4. Demographic and more detailed EV ownership questions.

2. What we can learn from

Section 1 - EV Ownership

  1. Ask about people’s current cognition of smart charging and V2G.
  2. If they are currently participating a smart charging program.
  3. A more detailed EV charger categorization:
    1. Level 1 charger - 3-pin plug
    2. Level 2 charger - unmanaged charger
    3. Smart charger
    4. V2G charger
  4. Household energy source installation:
    1. Smart energy meters
    2. Solar panels
    3. Solar water heaters
    4. Home battery (e.g. Powerwall)
    5. Green energy tariffs (e.g. Tesla Energy Plan)
    6. EV specific tariffs (e.g. EV Everywhere)

Section 2 - Educational Info

  1. Why do we need smart charging? It’s because charging millions of EVs needs to be managed to prevent from grid overloading and minimize costly upgrades, which is eventually paid for by the customers (Here we do need to emphasize that smart charging is here to help customers to ultimately save money).
  2. What is smart charging? Smart charging controls charging time and speed, to avoid peak times (This is the point: let users know that smart charging is primarily to avoid peak times. We used to emphasize too much on sacrificing usability).
  3. What is V2G? Upon smart charging, it also allows discharging to the grid or to the home/building. Discharging happens when the grid is in need during high demand, or during emergency when users’ own home/building needs power (this also gives the idea to the users that V2G does help to usability).
  4. How does it work? The short answer is it contains both the physical device and smartphone app. The physical device is called the smart charger. If an EV is smart charged, the charging information is collected and revealed in a smartphone app, so the smart charger is similar to an IoT device.
  5. A simple question checking if participants took attention in this section.
    1. For example, what can be managed with a smart charger? (The answer should be charging speed, charging time, and charging direction.)
    2. Another example, what is the difference between smart charging and V2G? (The answer should be V2G enables discharging.)
  6. Figures! We might also want to include some figures in our educational section to enhance understanding.

Section 3 - User Preferences

  1. Do we need an option to let users pay extra for regular charging during peak times?
  2. Do we need an attention check question in the middle of our questions?
  3. Do we need to change the scale of energy bill savings from 10% ~ 50% to 0% ~ 10%?

Section 4 - Demographic Questions and Detailed EV Ownership Questions

  • I have no comment on this section. I think our version is well-structured.

One more thing - Question types

  1. Multiple choice with single answer
  2. Multiple choice with multiple answer
  3. “To what extent” questions, from Strongly Disagree to Strongly Agree
  4. Different level questions, from 0 (not at all) to 4 (very much)
  5. Drop down lists

Above are the list of all question types in Prof Crozier’s survey. I believe we’ve covered most of them, but perhaps there is room for improvement.

3. Blames

Like Prof Crozier mentioned in our meeting, the users will always choose the best option. Of course they want their car to be charged with more percentage, and of course they prefer a higher energy bill discount. It’s a great idea of utilizing conjoint questions in our case.

Prof Crozier used a large number of questions to ask people’s attitudes toward smart charging, like if they think it is a good idea, how much they want to get from the program, how much they would sacrifice, etc. These could have been quantified using numbers in conjoint questions (which can be used as prediction as well), to save time for the survey participants and us.

I think this survey might take more than 20 minutes. We do want to include as many details as we can in the survey, but if there is room for simplification, I would love to.

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