4 Ways CPOs Can Leverage Real-Time EV Charging Data to Maximize Uptime and Revenue

In this article, we explore the different types of data you can access from your EV charging station and how to translate it into insights to improve your business performance. Let’s get started.

Table of Content 

• Types of data you can get from an EV charging station

• 4 ways CPOs can use EV charging data to improve their services

• From charger data to smart decisions: How NaNLABS can help

• Frequently asked questions about real-time data in EV charging

Types of data you can get from an EV charging station

Your EV chargers generate thousands of records a day, including timestamps, kWh delivered, user IDs, location, performance, and payment information. Here are some types of data you can collect and use for research:

1. Charging ports session data

All your charging devices can record session information, such as:

• Start and end times

• Duration

• Energy delivered (kWh)

• Power levels throughout the session

• Authentication methods used

• Payment information

Collecting session data is fundamental for identifying patterns, which can tell you where to add capacity or how to tailor your offering to different user groups.

2. User information and activity data

Modern charging platforms can collect valuable user behavior while respecting their privacy, such as:

• Frequency of visits

• Preferred charging times

• Payment preferences

• Booking habits

You can use AI tools for customer experience to understand how to personalize the experience and make charging sessions more enjoyable for each of them.

3. Performance and station usage data

Beyond individual sessions, charging stations continuously monitor operational health metrics and usage patterns, including:

• Occupancy rates

• Connector availability

• Error codes

• Temperature readings

• System status information

• System failure

• Time of failure

• Successfully completed sessions

All of these data points allow you to determine the status of your EV charging station's performance and reliability. Tracking this over time helps you anticipate issues and improve your health metrics.

Take the Joint Office of Energy and Transportation as an example. “We believe reliability is foundational to achieving a positive EV charging experience. We have a continuous improvement approach to tackling the challenges of building a reliable and convenient national charging network. We also measure our performance to see how our actions are actually helping to improve customers’ experience,” says Jacob Matthews, Senior Advisor of Standards and Reliability at the Joint Office of Energy and Transportation.

4. Energy consumption data over time

You want to know how much energy your charging stations consume over time and if there are any patterns across hours, days, and seasons. This data helps you identify peak demand periods and baseline usage to set up load balancing and dynamic pricing strategies.

5. Vehicle data

When authorized by users, you can collect information from vehicles, such as:

• Battery state of charge

• Battery capacity

• Maximum charge acceptance rate

• Vehicle model 

This allows you to offer personalized charging experiences and more efficient energy delivery to each customer. Understanding the interaction between the vehicle and the charger can help you optimize the charging curve specifically for that vehicle, enhancing both its charging speed and battery longevity.

4 ways CPOs can use EV charging data to improve their services

Having visibility into this data can help you improve the customer experience and your overall station performance. 

Use EV chargers’ real-time data processing to: 

1. Maximize uptime by setting up proactive anomaly detection and predictive maintenance 

To stay compliant with EV charging station US regulations and keep customers happy, you need to guarantee at least 97% of uptime, but as mentioned above, this is far from reality. The good news is, up to 80% of all software issues with EV chargers can be solved remotely and could likely be predicted. This is, of course, if you have access to real-time charging data. 

By leveraging machine learning models, CPOs can quickly identify subtle changes that could lead to failures. Examples of common malfunctions include unusually high connector temperatures, minor power fluctuations, or small increases in communication latency. 

For example, Tesla used to have a problem at its stations: Its chargers automatically lowered the power when they were getting too hot to avoid damage. “Some EV drivers found that if they took a wet towel and put it on the connector, it would trick the system into keeping the power level high, so they could charge faster," says Donna Paris, Director of Open Source Program at S44. 

This was a real issue for Tesla, because the chargers would take the towel’s temperature as the right one and continue overworking themselves. And, having broken chargers directly affects EV charging uptime.

“Rumor has it that Tesla has actually solved this trick. They were able to take the time series data from the temperature sensors in the cable heads and can now detect irregular behavior when people try to put a wet towel on the connector,” adds Donna. This solution was only possible due to Tesla having access to real-time and historical data.

Investing in predictive maintenance improves EV charging uptime and helps save costs as you don’t need to send workers to stations for on-site visits or repair the damaged equipment. 

2. Optimize spend by implementing dynamic load balancing

Implementing smart load management is essential for developing profitable charging operations. Accessing real-time data allows CPOs to automatically adjust power distribution across charging stations based on multiple factors, including current demand, user priorities, and electricity costs.

Dynamic load balancing (DLB) allows you to optimize electricity distribution without improving your infrastructure, which helps you save costs. Also, if your station is in a commercial building, you may find that they charge extra utilities when usage spikes above a certain threshold. DLB prevents those spikes (and extra associated costs) by properly spreading the load.

“As an example, think of a building that has 50 A with a dynamic load management system set for two chargers and a power reserve of 10%. The building uses 15 A for air conditioning. The load management meter and current transformer (CT) clamps will register this and only allow the two chargers 30 A to charge the electric vehicles,” says Thomas Ing, Technical Coordinator at Sevadis. But if the building increases usage to 20 A, then this will cause the chargers’ power to be reduced to 25 A.

Doing dynamic load balancing also allows you to charge multiple vehicles at the same time without risking overloading the grid and experiencing outages. Also, smart chargers can receive signals from utilities or grid operators. “It's important to note that all chargers being load managed must be on the same network because chargers communicate via a primary and secondary arrangement on a connected network,” adds Thomas.

Learn more about how this works. Read “From Grid to Charge: A Data-Driven Approach to EV Charging Networks” e-book.

3. Increase revenue thanks to pricing optimization

Imagine you have an Airbnb in Baltimore. The regular price per night is $80, but there’s a Taylor Swift concert in September, and everything is getting booked months in advance. The demand is high, so your night can’t cost $80 anymore; it would be leaving money on the table.

The same happens with your EV charging station. CPOs are implementing dynamic pricing strategies based on real-time and historical usage patterns. By analyzing historical usage along with real-time conditions, you can adjust pricing based on:

• Time-of-day demand patterns

• Current station occupancy

• Local electricity costs

• Competitive pricing in the area

• User loyalty status

You’ll need to check your local EV charging station regulatory law before adjusting your prices to ensure you remain compliant.  

You can also try different pricing approaches, for example, Pierre Clasquin, Vice President of EV Charge, explains that the company has tried different models, including: 

• Promoting the stations as parking spaces with charging capabilities. Meaning, the company follows a parking scheme pricing model and charges people by the hour.

• Charging people per consumed kWh.

• A mix between the two. The company charges people for the energy consumed and the time spent at the parking lot.

“Of course, we’ve also included a static pricing where if you charge on a 50 kilowatt charger, you will typically pay 50 cents, while on faster charges, you’ll pay 10 or 15 cents more. This is a way to differentiate the services,” adds Pierre.

4. Increase customer lifetime value (CLV) by improving their experience

For EV drivers, few things are more frustrating than arriving at a charger and finding it occupied or out of service. Smart CPOs are now using data to predict availability and communicate it to users in advance.

These systems combine historical usage patterns with real-time status information to forecast when stations will be available. When integrated with navigation apps and reservation platforms, this creates a seamless experience that builds customer loyalty, and helps increase their lifetime value. 

We recommend that you rely on an open standard protocol to protect your customer information. “As an operator, you rely on the back channels to have insights into your chargers—to know more directly what the error codes are and what’s happening. But if the charger manufacturer goes bankrupt, then you lose a lot of insight, and your customer experience suffers,” says Christian Weissmann, Software Engineer at S44. 

From charger data to smart decisions: How NaNLABS can help

Implementing these data-driven strategies requires a robust technical infrastructure. CPOs have two main options to get this infrastructure:

• Buy an out-of-the-box charge point management system (CPMS). Commercial CPMS platforms allow you to access pre-built data collection, analysis capabilities, and standardized dashboards and reports. This way, you can look into your devices and get insights into your station’s performance remotely. However, while these solutions provide quick implementation, many lack customization for specific business models. 

• Build your own. This is the best approach for CPOs using data as a competitive advantage. Custom development allows you to have greater flexibility as you develop a solution for your unique problems and devices.

Each approach comes with trade-offs in terms of cost, customization, and control. If you don’t have the time to build this solution in-house, NaNLABS specializes in creating custom observability platforms and CPMSs for EV CPOs. Our team can:

• Set up new data architectures designed for your specific hardware and software ecosystem

• Design a cloud-native data engineering solution with easy access to data analysis

• Leverage machine learning models to improve predictive analysis and send out proactive alerts to mitigate downtime

• Automate communication between your office and the station to improve remote problem resolution

We did this for an EV charging CPO client. It was struggling to determine why its sessions failed because the chargers were basically a black box. “As the CPO, it’s challenging to see the end-to-end view of a charging session and improve the service,” shared the Chief Software Engineer of EV Rechargery. “We needed to pull the data into one central spot so everyone could see it.”

NaNLABS worked alongside its team to develop an observability platform to test out data gathering from four stations in beta. “Initially, when they showed us the data structure, it was all very manual and time-consuming as the data was scattered around. Seeing it now on a single source is magnificent,” says Brenda Quispe, Data Engineer at NaNLABS. Read the full case study.

Want to gain insights into your chargers and predict malfunctions? Lean into a team of data experts who will turn your station information into actionable insights.

Get in touch

Sources

• Electric Vehicle (EV) Charging Stations Market. (2025).

• FHWA Memorandum (2023).

• The state of EV charging in America: Harvard research shows chargers 78% reliable and pricing like the ‘Wild West'’. (2024).