The Retention Imperative: Why EV-Centric Flexibility is a Strategic Advantage for Energy Retailers

December 2, 2025

Patrick Goodman

Blog

Patrick Goodman, Senior Business Development Manager at ev.energy, unpacks why EVs must be at the centre of smart home energy management propositions.

The European energy market is undergoing a high-stakes transformation. The conversations at conferences like Enlit confirm a simple truth: fierce competition is the new normal. For energy retailers, the primary challenge is no longer just securing supply, but achieving profitable customer acquisition and retention in the face of agile rivals.

In this environment, the electric vehicle (EV) driver is the single most valuable customer segment—but also the most contested. How do you secure this segment, drive customer loyalty, and simultaneously unlock new revenue streams from grid services and energy trading?

The answer lies in mastering the convergence currently reshaping the energy ecosystem.

Cutting Through the Complexity of Convergence

The marketplace is now saturated with vendors claiming 'end-to-end' Home Energy Management System (HEMS). Every player is vying to offer a solution that encompasses EV, solar, and battery management, often through fragmented or complex partnership models. This introduces significant strategic risk for retailers searching for a scalable, reliable solution.

The choice is complex, but the immediate priority is clear: the EV.

The EV is the biggest, most challenging, and most dynamic asset in the home, with the most potential value for retailers and customers. It requires dedicated, proven expertise to manage effectively, especially as adoption accelerates across Europe.

This is where ev.energy’s strategic focus provides clarity. We are built on deep, practical experience: seven years mastering EV flexibility, four years integrating solar, and a recent expansion to home batteries. We provide the definitive blueprint for EV smart charging—the essential, high-value component that fuels any successful HEMS strategy.

The Dual Opportunity: Loyalty and Revenue Generation

For Energy Retailers, a high-fidelity smart charging solution must achieve two goals:

1. Driving Loyalty with a Superior Experience

A generic or fragmented smart charging experience is a direct liability, pushing high-value EV customers toward competitors. We empower you to launch scalable smart charging propositions that fit seamlessly into your brand, delivering immediate, tangible customer value:

Financial Savings: Our solutions have been proven to generate significant customer savings. In Portugal, our pilot with Galp validated that optimizing for dynamic tariffs could save an average of 21% on charging costs.
Monetary Rewards: In the Netherlands, our work with ANWB created a dynamic offering in which drivers were occasionally paid to charge during periods of negative pricing, leading to impressive customer growth.
Control and Convenience: The platform ensures that drivers always have their car charged, ready for when they need it.

Whether you choose to integrate our robust APIs into your existing digital experience to own the customer journey, or adopt our fully branded solution for rapid deployment, ev.energy ensures the smart charging experience is a retention engine.

2. Unlocking the Full Flexibility Value Stack

The second opportunity is turning that vast EV load into a reliable revenue-generating asset. Our platform enables you to provide essential support for system and network balancing, thereby unlocking new revenue streams from grid services and accelerating your ability to trade energy more effectively.

Our global track record demonstrates our capability to manage this complexity, from utility programs in North America like SmartCharge New York with Con Edison to Charge Smart MA with National Grid. In the UK, we've been among the first to dispatch residential EV charging directly into wholesale power trading markets alongside our partner, Flexitricity.

Mitigating Risk with a Proven Partner

The risk in a converging market is choosing a solution that lacks the necessary depth in the most challenging area: high-fidelity EV load management.

By choosing ev.energy, you select a dedicated strategic partner. We provide the operational depth and proven scalability required to mitigate the competitive and integration risk inherent in this rapidly evolving market. We enable you to move beyond market complexity and focus on the future: deploying the definitive EV-centric blueprint to secure your customer base and unlock sustained commercial advantage.