In Norway, 97 % of the fuse boxes have a smart meter and many EV owners have their own parking space at home. As mentioned in the introduction, grid companies in Norway is facing a massive increase of EVs in the grid, and a consequent need for costly upgrades to the low-voltage network. Thus, the goal of the pilot here studied was to test solutions that could aid in postponing these investments and at the same time provide EV charging as needed. The innovation that was tested in this pilot was allowing the smart meter to communicate with the EV charger to avoid charging at peak hours. The charger in question could connect to all kinds of EVs. However, the most common in this pilot was the BMW i3, and the study also included EVs of other brands like Mercedes, Tesla and the Hyundai Ionic.
The grid company recruited participants through announcing the pilot in the newsletter, where they also offered a 50% discount on a charger. In 2019, chargers were quite expansive (around €1800-2000). Because of technical issues, the smart part of the charging was not up and running before 2020 after we did our interviews. However, the pilot succeeded with its mission statement, and off-peak charging is now offered by this charger in this grid operator’s area.
Research design
This paper is built on a qualitative research design. Our study is based on semi-structured interviews with 14 of 18 pilot participants and users of smart EV chargers in Stavanger, western Norway, a town of about 130 700 inhabits. The informants were all over 18 years and did consent verbal that we could use the empirical martial. All the informants are been anonymized. Most of the interviews were conducted in the home of the respondent. The qualitative interviews are intended to provide in-depth knowledge and thick descriptions about the topic we want to research and took as the main departure point an ambition to discover each respondent’s motivation for being a pilot participant in the first place. Originally, as we were attached to this pilot site ourselves, our mission was to gain insight on the smart charging experience, but because of technical issues causing delays in the project the smart charging user interface was not operational at the moment of inquiry. The interviews were undertaken at the latest possible convenience, in January and February in 2019, and besides the lacking smartness (i.e. load and price forecasting and machine learning capabilities) of the charger it was fully functional. Besides, many smart aspects were present after all, given that modern EVs come complete with advanced interfaces and programming capabilities in a companion app.
Our access to the pilot users were given by their own consent to be studied as research objects when signing up for the pilot, and practical access provided by the demo site owner, the local grid operator. They had18 smart charging pilot users, and we conducted in-depth interviews with 14 of them. We asked questions like; “What made you sign up for this pilot?”, “What charging solutions did you have before” and “Do you schedule/program the car’s charging hours?”. The interviews lasted from one to one and a half hours, and every interview was audio recorded and consequently transcribed verbatim. For the readers of this paper quotes have been translated by the authors from Norwegian into English. Our analysis is inspired by grounded theory which is guided by an inductive approach that places as the foundation of the analysis the empirical results [33].
Analysis: Domesticating smart charging - four motivations
One of the main motivations we found driving participation of our respondents in the pilot studied here was in fact a rather mundane one, namely saving money. This was due to the fact that participation in the demonstration was rewarded with a state-of-the-art EV home charger (wall mounted) at half price. This was such a great offer that it resulted in the pilot being fully signed on just half an hour after the network owner posted the offering in their newsletter sent to customers by email that day. This makes it evident, indeed as does the responses we received, that a good deal on a charger was a significant driving force for signing up for the pilot in the first place. However, few people buy new gadgetry for the sole reason that it is half price, especially if it includes the prospect of having to engage in a research project as an object of study. For this reason, we think there still is a question posed here of why the charger is so popular among this small group of Norwegians, and that it has to do with something more than simply the economic aspect. Indeed, our analysis discovered four different, albeit somewhat overlapping, motivations in total for participating in the pilot and appropriating a charger. They will be presented in the following, and they are 1) fast and fire safe charging, 2) technological interest and fun, 3) practical-economic concern, and 4) flexibility as comfort.
Fast and fire safe charging
One important reason for wanting to procure a charger at the household that we uncovered in our inquiries was their concern for the lack of fire safety inherent in the practice of charging from a regular outlet. Indeed, even though the fuse on the circuit to which one would couple and charge an EV would be sufficient in many cases (many models draw around 8-10 kW), the added impedance on a long cord used to do so can risk adding to the amperage requirements without any immediate indication, resulting in cords overheating and eventually catching fire. Stories of this had been more or less a recurring theme in news in step with increased EV adoption in Norway, and finally the Civil Proteciton and Emergency Directorate (DSB) issued stark recommendations on how to charge EVs safely. This included an advice to install a dedicated charger of some kind, but there were several concerns. In cases where it is absolutely necessary to use a regular outlet, the EV owner needs to make sure that it is earthed, and that is on a separate circuit with at minimum a 10 Ampere (A) fuse. Furthermore, a connector (usually the one that comes with the car as standard equipment) can be damaged because of its weight, and thus it is recommended to hang it on a hook or in a basket. If not, the optimal solution according to DSB is a home charging station. Such a device usually uses 16 A or 32 A fuse, but it can also be up to 63 A, and if such amounts of power is available in the local grid this can be accommodated by the installer. This awareness of EV charging and safety can be interpreted as a part of the cognitive and practical dimension in the domestication theory. Many of our EV owners were aware of this recommendation from the DSB but had not yet purchased a charger station because of their relatively steep high price. So, when they did get an offer of half price in the mail, they immediately responded. Like this man and woman describe why they did get the charger:
Man: Better charging. Faster.
Woman: We had an EV like the one [Man] has, so I often was able to borrow it and thought this was a safe solution.
Interviewer: In terms of fire safety.
Woman: Yes.
Man: If you have extension cords over a long period of time, they can get worn
INT nr?
The charging station is considered more effective and is simply better to use than the outlet, as one informant described it: “I’ve come to realize it is much safer to use it, we can control it much, much more than you can with a regular outlet, when considering the fire hazard” (Int. 13). Another said “I had just bought an electric car and was of the opinion that if you have an electric car you should have a charger in the house and not charge on a regular outlet” (Int.5), indicating they would think about this in terms of a responsible, packaged solution. This shows how the attitude for charging at a regular outlet is clearly connected to the risk of fire. The EV owner in this pilot found it down right unproper to not charge from a dedicated charging station, even though at the same time it is not in any way illegal or uncommon to do exactly that. In other words, the norm of charging in a fire safe manner is high among our EV owners. In contrast to the somber safety concern of the above referenced statements, other EV users were signing up purely out of a keen technological interest and a prospect of fun and playfulness that supposedly was obtainable through the use of smart technology.
Technological interest and fun
The motivation described by the users we have a closer look at here, was ascribed to an interest in mixing, matching and playing with smart home technology. One EV owner explains it like this: “I like to control the thing myself…. I think is fun to optimize things…. I think the technology and project is exciting” (Int 10). Another one stated outright offers of technology in general, like the smart charger offered through the demonstration project, was not interesting if he could not play with it: “I don’t pay for it if I cannot play with it…. It is when you can knock yourself out and try things and do things that you find interesting solutions…. I do not like technological solutions that are locked to one system or brand” (Int ??). This kind of creative playfulness shows another, totally different kind of motivation than the somber safety aspect. The EV owners here however ran into their own problems when running into lock-ins, bundling, or any kind of proprietary gadget or app, restricting the possibilities of play DIY aspirations, no longer affording a kind of mixing and matching of gadgets to achieve creative solutions and optimal conditions. In other words, were a piece of technology not to afford this kind of user the prospect of freely configuring it into an already existing technical landscape in the household, it would never be considered for appropriation.
Even though sometimes the consequences of the smart and technical endeavors of this playfulness could for instance constitute a kind of load shifting, this often was not the main interest and did not seem to be the ultimate goal of the engagement with the technology. Rather, the fun of exploring technology and making smart solutions work was the driving force, and any grid optimization result would be more or less coincidental. This indicates how these kinds of EV owners get a kind of joy out of tinkering and being in control of one’s technical equipment, which as a phenomenon is not particular to this study - This playful joy also functions as a motivation for some of the users that are part of the DIY communities on the internet as described by Hyysalo et al., 2013, but which meshes poorly without a personality that identifies strongly as somewhat technologically avant garde, technologically competent, and not to mention (even though mail order components from China may be cheap) having the income to sustain such a hobby. The playfulness is in this case a motivation for signing up for smart EV charger where load shifting may become a second order effect of having fun and interpreted as belonging to the symbolic dimension of the domestication of what kind of meaning the EV charger have for these kinds of informant. The charger is appropriated into an already existing network of gadgets, and as part of a hobby and area of expertise, relates to a matter of identity for these users.
The practical-economic concerns
The practical rationale for smart charging as motivation was first elicited by the discount on the charger, but when asked to elaborate, we were given the impression that signing up for the pilot was motivated by the prospect of installing smart home technology such as smart chargers because its first and foremost practical. Like on respondent said, “because it is smart, not cool (int 2)”. Another one of the pilot users compared it to having installed a smart thermostat in the bathroom to stabilize the floor temperature, not to save electricity. At first glance, this type of EV owner seemed to be interested in the technology but did not have the same feeling of fun in the optimalisation of the smart house as mention above. Not to be confused with the kind of user represented above, this user was explicitly not in it for fun, but on the contrary was motivated by a somber, common-sense, grudging dedication to fighting entropy, wherever it may be found, and in this case in the everyday life of mobility.
In a way there is an element here also of economic interest, but in a different way than the one regarding a good offer on the charger itself. This EV owner was more interested by economic benefits brought on by the prospect of a charger that only charges off the peaks, and when electricity is cheaper due to less demand. This kind of motivation can also be seen as a typical reflection of the resource man that assign control through set-and forget [16] as already described by Harper-Slaboszewicz [34]. This motivation we also found in descriptions of why users did choose an EV when exchanging the old one, simply because they got more car for their money, given the many policy measures favoring EVs like tax reduction, free parking, permanent car pool lane access, and free admission on toll roads.
Flexibility as comfort
When inquiring about charging habits we found many different practices played out. Some would immediately plug in and charge their EV the minute they came home, others after “the last trip of the day”, yet others every second or third day simply because they did not drive so much in the everyday life. We also found that even if the charger was not smart capable at the moment of our interview, some of the EV owners would use the companion app that came with the car in order to achieve a level of smartness. In some cases, users would even manually set the car to start charging at night and then off peaks via the interface inside the car itself. One of the EV owner actually explained that he did it because he wanted to alleviate grid congestion, but most others pointed out that they program to start charging at night because they wanted the battery to be healthy. Finally, another practical concern that influenced charging practice was because of comfort in the wintertime.
“Yes, when it is like it is in this time of year I had, and then it’s normal to set it to charge and set it so that it’s done in the morning, then you have a pre-heated battery, that’s important in the winter, that the battery is pre-heated”
To pre-heat the battery in the wintertime in Norway was important for some of the EV owners due to expectations about battery health and life expectancy (arguably one of the bigger concerns of the EV owner as opposed to ICEV). But night charging and preheating also brought about aspects of comfort, as the car would be warm before setting out in the morning.
Well, the way I use the app is that I’ve set up the car so that it will charge in a certain period, it’ll pre heat to a certain time or another, and that’s automatic, or I just set it up to be warm at 0721 or thereabouts. And then it’s been charging for three hours. (Int 3)
As this EV user explained he had set the car to start charging at night, and in the extension of this the heating in the car would switch on. Another EV owner explained that he had timed the charging because his wife did preferer to get into preheated car in the morning. In fact, preheating is also common to do with ICEVs in the wintertime in Norway with the aid of an electric engine heater. This is both fuel efficient and healthy for the engine, as well as adding comfort in the morning, and is really an already existing part of the Norwegian comfort-oriented driving culture [21]. Some of the EV owners did this preheating when the EV was charging, but others also used a car heater whiteout using the battery in the car. In short, preheating is a way of providing comfort that also can be a motivation to do load shifting.
In this analysis we have seen examples of how the charger becomes part of everyday life through for instance a cognitive dimension of fire safety and optimal charging conditions, a symbolic dimension represented by technological interest and fun, and finally a practical dimension where economic and comfort concerns were catered to through flexibility oriented user behavior.
Through this analysis we have been seen example on cognitive dimension (fire safe and fast charging), Symbolic dimension (technological interest and fun) and practical dimension (practical-economic concern and flexibility as comfort.) The reasons for and ways in which our EV users go about appropriating and putting to use in everyday life an EV home charging station is different, but have all resulted in some kind of charging behavior or other. In short, we find that the ways in which the charger is domesticated is not determined by the charger itself, but by how the charger becomes a part of the home life.