Seattle City Light Public Charging Evaluation

Challenge

Seattle City Light was looking for recommendations on how to best improve customer satisfaction experiences with EV charging stations in the region and to help ensure a successful expansion of new chargers throughout Seattle’s Environmental Justice Communities.

Solution

TRC’s Research and Consulting Team led a comprehensive public EV charging station research project including multi-lingual customer surveys; analysis of EV charger operations and maintenance data; site selection and construction document reviews; and interviews with program staff. The research objectives focused on customer satisfaction and experiences; challenges and opportunities with charger site selection; and areas for improvement on operations and maintenance data collection to inform future evaluation and program design.

Results

TRC provided key findings and recommendations to help improve customer satisfaction and experience with public charging stations in Seattle’s Environmental Justice Communities. Recommendations include charger usability and reliability improvements such as easy to use apps with simple payment features; improving future charging site selection by assessing the communities needs and preferences on location; and improved charging station operation through detailed vendor contract negotiations.