Abstract:
“If You Build It, They May Not Come: Willingness to Participate in Managed EV Charging”
Fiona Burlig University of Chicago), James Bushnell (University of California, Davis), and David Rapson* (University of California, Davis)
Policymakers increasingly rely on pilot programs and experiments to guide large-scale energy policy. But when participation in voluntary programs is low—and impacts differ across households—the most policy-relevant evidence comes from experiments that include all eligible households, not just those who enroll. We study a managed electric vehicle (EV) charging program in an EV-dense region of California designed to shift charging away from peak hours and reduce strain on the local distribution grid. We randomly assigned the full population of eligible EV-owning households to receive program offers. Even when offered incentives of up to $40 per month, fewer than 5 percent enrolled. Consistent with this low take-up, we find no detectable change in overall electricity demand patterns at the population level. These results suggest that voluntary managed charging programs may deliver far smaller grid benefits than anticipated and underscore the importance of evaluating policies at the scale at which they are intended to operate.
*Denotes presenter