Rate-Design Best Practices for Public Electric-Vehicle Chargers

The policy brief examines how traditional utility demand charges create a financial barrier for public DC fast-charging networks, often accounting for over 90% of electricity costs. It proposes a shift toward time-varying volumetric rates and low fixed charges to better align costs with the sporadic usage patterns of EV charging.

• Utility demand charges, which are based on peak monthly electricity consumption, can account for more than 90 percent of a public DC fast-charging station's electricity costs, depending on the tariff and utilization rate.
• There is a disconnect between revenue and costs for DCFC operators because revenue is driven by the number of charging sessions and kWh consumed (which can vary by up to 70 percent monthly), while costs are driven by peak demand charges (which may only vary by 16 percent monthly).
• Traditional demand charges are ill-suited for public DCFC because operators cannot control when customers use the chargers, unlike the commercial or industrial facilities for which these charges were originally designed.
• Best practices for DCFC electricity tariffs include the use of time-varying volumetric rates (such as Time-of-Use rates) to recover system capacity costs, low fixed charges for maintenance and billing, and the elimination or limitation of demand charges to only location-specific connection costs.
• The document suggests that because public DCFC provide a public good through reduced air pollution, some costs could be recovered from the general customer base rather than solely from the charger operators.

APA

RMI (2017). Rate-Design Best Practices for Public Electric-Vehicle Chargers. https://rmi.org/resources/rate-design-best-practices-public-electric-vehicle-chargers/

Chicago

RMI. Rate-Design Best Practices for Public Electric-Vehicle Chargers. 2017. https://rmi.org/resources/rate-design-best-practices-public-electric-vehicle-chargers/.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=RMI |title=Rate-Design Best Practices for Public Electric-Vehicle Chargers |date=6 April 2017 |url=https://rmi.org/resources/rate-design-best-practices-public-electric-vehicle-chargers/ |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{rmi2017ratedesign, author = {{RMI}}, title = {{Rate-Design Best Practices for Public Electric-Vehicle Chargers}}, institution = {RMI}, year = {2017}, month = apr, url = {https://rmi.org/resources/rate-design-best-practices-public-electric-vehicle-chargers/}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }