How does Evercharge pricing work?

[BillO]

I have decided to get a Volt while I wait for the Tesla Model 3, and so I will be getting charging set up in my condo parking space. The HOA has contracted with Evercharge to manage EV charging and a few stations have already been installed in the garage. I have a copy of the Evercharge member agreement and it is fairly vague about some of the key points. I got some answers from Kyle at Evercharge, but his answers have confused me even more. So I was hoping someone with Evercharge experience could help.

My question is, how does billing work exactly? The agreement says billing is done by the number of hours spent charging during the month. There are two pricing tiers, based on the amount of power your car draws. I wanted to know how the time accounting is done, what is the granularity. I was hoping that they would count up the minutes spent charging and then compute a monthly charge based on the hourly rate.

Instead, I got this answer:

• [FONT=HelveticaNeue, Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, Arial, Lucida Grande, sans-serif]Your billed only for the power used. [/FONT]As the car draws less power the hourly rate scales proportionally to the power being consumed instantaneously.

This doesn't make any sense to me -- if this was the case, they wouldn't have 2 different pricing tiers. It would be great if they billed based on actual power consumed, but this is not what the member agreement says.

Any insight would be be much appreciated!

Bill

 

[jbcarioca]

I have EverCharge. No question about it, their pricing is quite obscure. If you persist they'll end out giving you the KWh equivalent pricing. I am currently the only user in my HOA. They have been fairly supportive and not too difficult in negotiations. A key issue is the payment they make to the HOA. As an owner you should have access to the repayment rate so you can also understand the EverCharge markup. Kyle tries very hard to be helpful but can be vague about the actual effective pricing.

 

[MikeInFL]

Not a fan. They are a middle man, nothing here you could not do yourself.

 

[jbcarioca]

Not a fan. They are a middle man, nothing here you could not do yourself.

True. However, HOA's often do not want to be involved in use of individual owner electrical connections through public areas, nor do they want the administrative burden of billing, not to mention the request mandate for high liability coverage. That makes third party services such as those of EverCharge, chargepoint and others a necessity. Zero question about it, a direct connection is much, much cheaper.

 

[brkaus]

Would their pricing have anything to do with laws regarding selling electricity in some states?

 

[jbcarioca]

Would their pricing have anything to do with laws regarding selling electricity in some states?

Absolutely they claim it does. However, in many jurisdictions, including mine, EV charging is legislatively defined as not functional no as an electrical utility. Most third parties seem to employ the same approach regardless of legal status. Honestly, I can hardly blame them.

 

[BillO]

Not a fan. They are a middle man, nothing here you could not do yourself.

Actually, my understanding is that this isn't quite true. Evercharge installs hardware that allows them to schedule and throttle charging so more cars can potentially be supported than if everyone just installed their own outlet. This of course depends on most cars not needing a full charge at exactly the same time, which I think is a pretty safe assumption. The result is that an expensive service upgrade can be delayed or avoided altogether.

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I have EverCharge. No question about it, their pricing is quite obscure. If you persist they'll end out giving you the KWh equivalent pricing. I am currently the only user in my HOA. They have been fairly supportive and not too difficult in negotiations. A key issue is the payment they make to the HOA. As an owner you should have access to the repayment rate so you can also understand the EverCharge markup. Kyle tries very hard to be helpful but can be vague about the actual effective pricing.

Can you share any more details? I can't even figure out whether they charge by time or by KWh. The member agreements says you pay by the hour, .64 per hour in the case of the Volt, for a 3.3 KW connection. That would be .1939 per KWh if the outlet is delivering the full output. Due to throttling (admittedly probably a concern for the future), it may not deliver the full 3.3 KW hence my question.

 

[jbcarioca]

Actually, my understanding is that this isn't quite true. Evercharge installs hardware that allows them to schedule and throttle charging so more cars can potentially be supported than if everyone just installed their own outlet. This of course depends on most cars not needing a full charge at exactly the same time, which I think is a pretty safe assumption. The result is that an expensive service upgrade can be delayed or avoided altogether.

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Can you share any more details? I can't even figure out whether they charge by time or by KWh. The member agreements says you pay by the hour, .64 per hour in the case of the Volt, for a 3.3 KW connection. That would be .1939 per KWh if the outlet is delivering the full output. Due to throttling (admittedly probably a concern for the future), it may not deliver the full 3.3 KW hence my question.

Evercharge does claim that they can throttle in order to manage more cars on a single connection. What they do not tell you is that they have a single 240v (or 208v) 30a connection to handle all that.
as for the calculation basis, that is not easy. they define an hour in terms of voltage x amperage, so an Evercharge 'hour' is not a clock 'hour'. because their charges amount to a markup on Kwh supplied through an HOA or somebody else, their actual charges depend on their cost plus their markup. You need to be prepared to work all that out and then negotiate with them. The extra work will pay off for you. Kyle or anybody else can explain all that but you'll need to be persistent.