Electrification is adding load faster than the grid can be built, and the squeeze hits two levels at once: rising system peaks strain generation and transmission, while the same EV and new demand loads push local feeders and transformers toward their limits. The relief sits in the assets driving the growth: EVs, home batteries and solar that can shift when they draw power. Managed charging and multi-asset orchestration turn them into dispatchable capacity, shaving peaks and easing local strain without new generation. Utilities understand this grid value; the open question is reach: how many eligible customers a program can sign up and connect.
It is an unglamorous constraint, but the binding one. Dispatchable capacity is a function of how many assets you have enrolled, how available they are and how much load each can shift. Enrollment sits at the front of that equation. You cannot optimize a charging session for a vehicle you never connected, or dispatch a battery whose owner never finished sign-up. Every eligible customer a program leaves out is capacity left on the table.
ev.energy's research with The Brattle Group, The $30 Billion Utility Playbook, put the value of managed charging at up to $575 per actively managed vehicle per year, and that models EV charging alone, before solar, batteries and bidirectional charging push it higher. But it is a ceiling, realized only if programs enroll and retain the customers behind it.
Too often, enrollment is treated as a marketing task that follows the technology decision. But customers fall out for two reasons. Both shrink dispatchable capacity, and neither is really about technology or marketing.
The eligibility gap
A decade ago, the technology was often the constraint: utilities kept waiting lists of customers who wanted in but owned a device no platform could support. That limit has largely closed. Platforms like Eve now connect a wide range of EV models, chargers, batteries and solar, so the question is no longer what the technology supports, but how many eligible customers a program reaches. By ev.energy's analysis of public integration data, the direct OEM pathway typically reaches an estimated 70 to 75 percent of US EV drivers; meeting customers across four pathways (OEM- and customer-authorized telematics, charger integrations and meter-based participation where no connected device exists) lifts coverage to over 95 percent of the addressable resources. The figures are modeled, but the direction is the point: every added pathway connects more customers and adds another way to stay enrolled.
The recruitment gap
The second is the recruitment gap. Technically eligible customers still sometimes fail to enroll, because they were never reached, or the sign-up process asked too much or was too complex. Open, omnichannel enrollment, low-friction onboarding, clear eligibility checks and dependable incentive fulfillment are not nice-to-haves. They separate a program that enrolls most of its eligible base from one that captures a sliver.
Equity and enrollment are the same challenge
Equity mandates meet program design here, too. Regulators in California and the Northeast increasingly expect every customer to be served, including renters, multi-unit dwellers and those in disadvantaged communities, not only single-family homeowners. Broader device support is itself an equity lever: for instance, connecting older, more affordable used EVs reaches households a newer-models-only program would miss. ChargeWise, a California Community Choice Aggregation-run program ev.energy powers, won a 2026 AESP Energy Award for Innovations in Technology, proof that broad reach and grid performance are built together.
Treat reach as infrastructure
The enrollment layer deserves the same engineering rigor as the dispatch layer. We must design from day one to connect every eligible asset, recruit across every channel and treat reach as infrastructure, not a launch campaign.
There is a regulatory dividend, too. Flexibility programs are judged on benefit-cost tests, and the benefits reach the whole system: even the first few hundred connected devices shave peaks and defer investment, putting downward pressure on costs every ratepayer would otherwise carry. From there, the case only compounds: each additional enrolled customer adds dispatchable capacity and improves the benefit-cost ratio, making for a better-performing program and a more straightforward one to defend before regulators and stakeholders. Reach, equity and grid value are not three conversations. They are one.
The grid value is proven. The unlock is enrollment, designed from the start so every eligible customer can take part and every kilowatt can be dispatched.
ev.energy builds and runs the full lifecycle of utility flexibility programs across North America and Europe, from planning through enrollment, dispatch and settlement on its platform, Eve™. Eve Programs is the enrollment layer: open, omnichannel recruitment and onboarding that reaches and connects every eligible customer. Explore Eve Programs.
