Community Highlights: Meet Alexander Boom of Power Boom

Today we’d like to introduce you to Alexander Boom.

Hi Alexander, we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, maybe you can briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today?
Power Boom’s purpose is to make electric vehicle (EV) charging more accessible by making it simpler and more rewarding to set up and manage EV charging sites.

Over a decade working in clean energy and electrification for two global service providers and manufacturers of solar panels, batteries, and electric vehicle chargers, Power Boom’s founder, Alexander Boom, witnessed how quickly and happily drivers in the US are evolving from driving fossil-fuel-powered to electric vehicles. He also recognized that EV drivers want more charging locations and that owner-operators of most facilities can benefit from offering on-site EV charging to meet this growing demand. However, too many of these owner-operators aren’t capitalizing on the opportunity due to their knowledge gap in electric vehicle charging technology, electrical infrastructure, and the return on investment for charging sites.

So in 2003, Alexander created the Power Boom to bridge this knowledge gap, enabling facility owner-operators to offer EV charging and electrify their vehicle fleets successfully.

Power Boom’s first client was a tire shop in San Diego, California, whose owner wanted to provide EV charging as an amenity for customers to charge their vehicles while his team serviced them, and to generate revenue by offering public pay-to-use charging outside business hours. We helped the owner identify the charging hardware and software that worked well with his facility’s layout and met the charging needs of the two user groups.

Since then, Power Boom has guided the owners and operators of small businesses, manufacturing facilities, apartment complexes, entertainment districts, K-12 school districts, and colleges across the country in successfully planning, building, managing, and expanding EV charging sites and fleet electrification for their facilities and organizations. Typically, our clients save $10,000-$100,000+ in equipment, software, labor, and construction costs, avoid unnecessary electrical upgrades, reclaim weeks in analysis and project management, and, most importantly, can offer reliable and future-proofed EV charging on-site that bolsters their reputation, operational efficiencies, and bottom line.

A couple of years ago, Alexander moved back to his hometown of Cleveland to raise two young boys down the road from his parents. These days, Power Boom’s core focus is expanding the local EV charging network by supporting the leaders of businesses, organizations, and educational institutions in Northeast, OH, who are considering EV charging for their facilities. Through this work, Power Boom has helped build charging for Shaker Heights City Public Schools’ growing electric school bus fleet – the first public school district in Ohio to electrify its buses. As well as helping businesses around downtown Cleveland assess EV charging opportunities.

I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
It certainly hasn’t always been a smooth road. Two experiences stand out:

1) I co-founded Power Boom with a woman whom I had worked for years while running marketing partnerships for a global solar panel and battery manufacturer. I hired her company to process all of our rebate and customer payments, and through working closely together, we developed a close friendship. When I left the manufacturer, we decided we wanted to work together and founded Power Boom. She was still the CEO of her other company, and less than a year after founding Power Boom, one of her largest clients went out of business. It was a really challenging time for her, her company, and our work together at Power Boom.

Ultimately, she decided to stop working on Power Boom and fully dedicate herself to rebuilding her first company. It was the right decision for her and her once again thriving company, but it was a big hit to Power Boom and required a complete rethinking of the business strategy.

She and I had complementary skill sets and were great sounding boards for one another, which is why we had decided to work together. Without her, I had to figure out how to fill all of the roles, especially on the sales and business operations side, where she’s particularly skilled and experienced. I had to pivot the business and accept that growth would be slower for a while as I learned how to fill her shoes. Now, I’m grateful that I’ve been able to improve my sales skills, that her original company is thriving, and that our friendship has remained strong. Those bumps have been smoothed out, and luckily, Power Boom landed in a good place, but the future was unsure for many months, and the day-to-day was challenging.

2) The second bumpy road was the first EV charging site that I was involved in building. Going into the project, I had conducted the due diligence analysis, I knew how it all was supposed to work, and I had coordinated all of the necessary pieces:

* analyzed the needs of the site, client, and electrical infrastructure, which determined the EV charging hardware and software solutions that were viable
* found high-integrity electricians with certifications and experience required to build EV charging sites
* found the right EV charging solutions distributors
* coordinated permitting and the construction crews

But it was still all theory, and I was nervous that I had missed a critical step or test that would make the charging site not work once I brought all the pieces together. I went to the site every day, almost certain that today was the day it would unravel. And, the reality was that every day there were hurdles to overcome and items to troubleshoot, especially the last day, when it took 24 hours, and dozens of back-and-forth calls with the software company, charging hardware distributor, and hardware manufacturer to get the chargers commissioned and the software recognizing the new chargers in my client’s dashboard. Ultimately, though, I was able to solve all of the issues for my client, and it reaffirmed to my client and me that Power Boom provides a lot of value, and the charging site wouldn’t have been successfully set up without Power Boom.

Life has taught me that things are never as smooth as you anticipate from the outside or at the outset. So when the smooth times come, enjoy and appreciate them to the fullest, and expect them to get bumpy again… likely sooner than you think. The bumps are literally what force growth and enable us to enjoy the smooth periods.

We’ve been impressed with Power Boom, but for folks who might not be as familiar, what can you share with them about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
In addition to what I shared in my first response, I want people to know that:

* Power Boom can help you no matter where you are in the process of setting up EV charging. From determining when it makes sense to add charging to your facility, to creating a strategy and plan for adding charging, to building the first charging site, to optimizing the use of existing EV charging, and even planning for the upgrade and expansion of on-site EV charging. We help some clients with each of these steps, and others with only one or a few. We can plug in at any point in your process, so it’s never too late to have Power Boom ensure your success.
* We’re unique in not accepting referral payments to recommend specific products or services, so our clients can rest assured that we recommend and help them acquire the EV charging solutions that are the right fit for their needs and goals.
* Our north star is making it easier to drive electric vehicles, which is why we ensure that our clients’ projects are future-proofed and successful from the start. It’s also why we tell some of our clients it’s not the right time to offer EV charging at their facility. That may sound counterintuitive, but we prioritize long-term sustainable partnerships with our clients and are less interested in how many chargers you set up at your facility this year than how many you’ll set up over the next decade. If we recommend a solution that isn’t the right fit, or set up charging too early, and they don’t achieve their goals, it’s going to leave a bad taste in their mouth and deter them from setting up more charging. So we’ll only recommend moving forward with a project or technology once we’re confident in its long-term success.
* With Alexander being a Cleveland native, Power Boom is now fully dedicated to the growth, evolution, and electrification of Northeast Ohio. We want to be a leading force in creating cleaner air, economic opportunity, and an innovative reputation for our region.

Let’s talk about our city – what do you love? What do you not love?
I love how friendly and easy to talk to the people are in our city. I love that people in line at CVS strike up conversations with each other – I’ve lived in many states and communities, and it’s not like that everywhere.

I also love that if people are having a discussion in public, at a bar, in a park, in line at a store, etc., you’re usually welcome to join in. I also love that people here are passionate, but generally don’t take themselves too seriously. People are easy to laugh at things, including themselves.

Finally, I love the diversity of the people who make up our city—their viewpoints, cultural backgrounds, and heritage. And I love that it’s becoming more culturally diverse than I remember it being growing up.

Okay, one last thing. I love that Cleveland has more electric vehicles per capita than almost any city in Ohio (Akron/Canton is the only city beating us). What I like least is that we have the fewest public electric vehicle chargers per capita of any city in Ohio. We’ve got work to do!

Pricing:

• Pricing is done on a per-project basis because the needs of each client and charging site vary greatly. Generally, we bill on an hourly rate, and discounts are provided for multi-phase projects and for public schools and non-profits.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://PowerBoom.co
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/power-boom/