Cost Barriers Analysis for Public and Workplace Electric Vehicle Charging Stations

Shifting vehicular transportation from gas to electric is crucial for reducing climate-warming greenhouse gas emissions and air pollution from tailpipes. The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) is one of several California state agencies working to electrify transportation. Business models for public and workplace electric vehicle (EV) charging stations face profitability challenges. This study evaluates how CPUC should lower cost barriers for companies that offer charging as a service, so that these companies will undertake more projects at public and workplace locations.

Policy recommendations stemming from this analysis are: • Establish electricity rate structures that optimizing for affordability each billing period by adjusting demand charges relative to total electricity use. • Change electric rules on cost sharing between utilities and customers for transformer upgrades to reduce the portion a station developer pays. • Expand use of utility funds for “make-ready” infrastructure to all publicly accessible EV charging sites, eliminating those costs for station developers.

California’s Clean Energy and Pollution Reduction Act of 2015 ordered CPUC to direct electric utilities to file applications for large transportation electrification programs. A 2018 executive order from the governor set a state target for 250,000 EV charging stations by 2025 and 5 million zero-emission vehicles by 2030. The state is not on track to meet these targets, and its transportation greenhouse gas emissions are growing.

Availability of public and workplace EV charging stations is key to enabling drivers to choose electric vehicles without fearing they will run out of charge on the road. Drivers without access to home charging rely entirely upon publicly accessible EV charging. Two common power levels of public charging stations are Level 2 and DC fast, which charge a battery in several hours and in half an hour, respectively.

This study’s author builds a cost model that takes user inputs about an EV charging site’s features and use, and produces low-, mid- and high- range cost values for that scenario. Costs are annualized and divided by annual electricity use, yielding output in dollars per kilowatt-hour, called the levelized cost of electricity (LCOE). Insights from the cost model analysis include: High charger usage brings down LCOE dramatically, electricity costs most frequently comprise the largest proportion of LCOE, and DC fast chargers have higher and more variable LCOE than Level 2 chargers. Public EV charging costs 2 to 25 times more than average electricity rates, and on a per-mile basis it costs 1.5 to 15 times more than driving on gasoline.

Among policy options identified through expert interviews and literature review, this study recommends options consistent with its cost model results and CPUC’s goals. CPUC values fostering a competitive market for EV charging, minimizing greenhouse gas emissions from the electric grid, reducing air pollution in disadvantaged communities, and choosing strategies that are straightforward to implement.

The first recommended policy would introduce a new electricity rate structure for EV chargers. It would improve the balance between two kinds of electricity costs and minimize the monthly bill. The second recommend policy would reduce or remove the cost of any necessary transformer upgrades from the station developer’s perspective by shifting the cost to the utility. The third recommended policy would also remove a cost for charging-as-a-service providers. The utility, rather than the station developer, would pay for work such as trenching wires to making a parking space ready for a charging unit. When implementing these strategies, CPUC should involve members of environmentally and economically disadvantaged communities in planning and decision-making to ensure policy effectiveness and equitable outcomes.