As I’m receiving my CCS1 to Tesla adapter I started looking into the pricing on EVgo and EA. Interestingly in my state EVgo does per minute pricing and EA does per kWh pricing only. Is there a reason behind it? (Legal?) Also wouldn’t EVgo be cheaper if I get above 60kw speed at $0.3/min vs EA’s $0.31/kWh?
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Per minute vs per kWh pricing and why
- Thread starter kylinblue
- Start date
swaltner
Active Member
Charging price increase
Why has charging at superchargers in Alberta increased 100%? This seems excessive and there was no warning. Why aren’t the news stations talking about this?
teslamotorsclub.com
Yes, and it is a legal reason. All charging companies say they would like to just do straightforward billing by the unit, which is kWh. But in a lot of states, there are laws that state that only an official utility company (basically the ones that have to be registered with and regulated by the state's Public Utilities Commission) are allowed to sell electricity by the unit. So in those states, all of the charging companies are literally not allowed to "sell electricity". So they are using a loophole to get around those laws by letting people rent "time" using the service of being connected to their stations.
I don't know if EA owns all the chargers or not, but I know near my work, I saw some newly installed CCS DC fast chargers, and they look to be owned by the local utility company, based on the logos/decals on the machine...
Oh, that would be an interesting distinction. They probably would be allowed to sell by the kWh, while charging network companies wouldn't.
bradtem
Robocar consultant
Sometimes the law dictates it. However, it is more complex than that. Charging doesn't really sell electricity. It's a service, for which the actual electricity is often a small part of the cost -- as low as 3 cents/kwh wholesale.
Once the kwh are in your car, they are just kwh, and you use them to drive. So we definitely like to only pay for "what we get" which is kwh when we leave the station.
However, we care a great deal about how fast we get those kwh, and where we get them. And the station owner mostly cares about how many cars it can charge in a day, which is based on time. A large part of what they want to sell you is minutes at the charger. When you sit near the end of your charge, pulling only 20kw, you are wasting your own time and wasting the charger's time, as it could be feeding the next guy at 200kw. We get annoyed at a per-minute station when it only gives us 20kw -- cheating us! -- but it's our car that's refusing to take the power any faster, not the station.
So it's really a mix. But we also want simplicity of pricing. A real price, which would be a complex mix of the kwh and the minutes, would be confusing to customers and is more than they want to think about. And the kwh do change price during the day due to market demand. A very large part of that is the cost of transmission, which is under high demand at 4pm and minimal demand at midnight. For generation, the cost varies greatly based on where it's generated. Most generation costs the same all day, but solar and wind come with the sun and weather.
So there is no one right answer to please both buyer and seller.
Once the kwh are in your car, they are just kwh, and you use them to drive. So we definitely like to only pay for "what we get" which is kwh when we leave the station.
However, we care a great deal about how fast we get those kwh, and where we get them. And the station owner mostly cares about how many cars it can charge in a day, which is based on time. A large part of what they want to sell you is minutes at the charger. When you sit near the end of your charge, pulling only 20kw, you are wasting your own time and wasting the charger's time, as it could be feeding the next guy at 200kw. We get annoyed at a per-minute station when it only gives us 20kw -- cheating us! -- but it's our car that's refusing to take the power any faster, not the station.
So it's really a mix. But we also want simplicity of pricing. A real price, which would be a complex mix of the kwh and the minutes, would be confusing to customers and is more than they want to think about. And the kwh do change price during the day due to market demand. A very large part of that is the cost of transmission, which is under high demand at 4pm and minimal demand at midnight. For generation, the cost varies greatly based on where it's generated. Most generation costs the same all day, but solar and wind come with the sun and weather.
So there is no one right answer to please both buyer and seller.
Great detailed explanation. At the current moment I’m just taking advantage that the EVgo here pushes out 200kw to my Tesla while on a relatively cheap per minute pricing. The Electrify America stations here are same price as superchargers but requires monthly pass to be at that level.
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