What electricity actually costs an EV charging station

Someone looks up their state’s EV charging tariff, finds a clean figure per unit, and puts it into a spreadsheet. The model then runs on a cost that will not appear on any bill they ever receive.

The figure in a tariff schedule is usually the energy charge only. What you pay per unit delivered — the landed cost — is that plus several other things, and in some states it is not even measured in the units you assumed.

What your bill is actually made of

That ancillary list is not invented for illustration. It is the set a real tariff schedule enumerates — Telangana’s states that there is no change to listed ancillary charges such as minimum, customer, delayed payment, reconnection, testing, supervision/inspection, low-power-factor, capacitor, green-tariff and standby charges. Every one of those is a line that can appear on an EV charging station’s bill.

Two real tariffs, and what they show

Two states we have verified against primary sources, to make the variation concrete:

Note the two figures are not directly comparable, and the reason matters more than the difference.

kWh and kVAh are not the same billing basis

A kWh charge bills you for real energy consumed. A kVAh charge bills you for apparent energy — which includes the reactive component. The practical consequence: under kVAh billing, a poor power factor increases your bill for the same energy delivered to vehicles, because you are charged on apparent rather than real consumption.

That turns power factor from an engineering detail into an operating cost line. If your DISCOM bills on kVAh, correction equipment and the power-factor behaviour of your chargers have a direct rupee effect — and a model built by converting a kVAh tariff into a kWh assumption at parity will understate your cost.

Also worth reading carefully: Maharashtra’s LT VIII fixed and demand charge is recorded as nil for that period, which is genuinely favourable — but it is recorded for MSEDCL, and much of Mumbai is served by other licensees whose schedules must be confirmed separately. Our own Maharashtra reference lists confirming the exact licensee division and tariff as a critical open question rather than assuming it.

The cap that protects you, and when it ends

There is one national provision materially in your favour. Under the Ministry of Power’s 2024 guidelines, the supply tariff to a public charging station is capped at the Average Cost of Supply until 31 March 2028.

Two things follow. First, it limits how far your input cost can be pushed in the near term, which is worth knowing when you are modelling. Second — and this is the part to put in your plan rather than your memory — it has an end date. Any model whose horizon runs past March 2028 is assuming something about what replaces that cap. Make the assumption explicit and test the case without it.

As a reference range, ACoS varies across states and utilities in roughly ₹6–9/kWh. We label that as an estimate, not a verified national figure — your state tariff order overrides it in every case.

Why this decides more than it looks

Because your margin per unit is capped by regulation, your input cost is one of the few variables that materially moves the business. With the service charge ceiling fixed — ₹3/₹4 per kWh on AC and ₹11/₹13 on DC — every rupee of landed cost you did not model is a rupee of margin that was never there. You cannot pass it on.

This is why a wrong electricity assumption is more dangerous than a wrong capex assumption. Capex is a one-time error you discover at purchase. Landed cost is an error that repeats on every unit for the life of the project, and it compounds directly into the coverage ratio a lender will test you on — see the DSCR test.

A short checklist

1. Identify your distribution licensee and division for the exact address — not just the state.
2. Get the applicable tariff category for EV charging and the current schedule.
3. Establish whether billing is kWh or kVAh, and if kVAh, plan for power-factor correction.
4. Add fixed and demand charges at your sanctioned load — these are payable at zero throughput.
5. Add duty, adjustments and ancillary charges.
6. Sanity-check against an actual bill for a comparable connection.
7. Model the case with and without the ACoS cap beyond March 2028.

Sources

Tariff schedules change annually and vary by licensee; confirm the current order for your division before relying on any figure here. Reference information for planning purposes, not legal, engineering or financial advice. Found an error? Tell us.