Electricity Vehicles Rates and Cost of Fueling

Electric Rates for EV Drivers

The CPUC has approved several residential time-of-use (TOU) energy rates for customers of PG&E, SCE, SDG&E, Bear Valley, and Liberty Utilities who drive EVs to allow them to charge their vehicles at home at a more reasonable price. EV-TOU rates have a very low super off-peak price at the times that energy is at its lowest cost to encourage customers to charge their vehicles during those hours.

The CPUC has also approved commercial EV-specific rates for the three large IOUs. SCE’s commercial EV rates offer a five-year period without demand charges. PG&E offers a commercial and industrial subscription-based EV rate, in which the subscription charge is designed to replace demand charges. PG&E is also implementing a dynamic commercial rate for EV customers that incudes day ahead hourly real-time pricing. Lastly, SDG&E is implementing its Electric Vehicle High Power (EVHP) rate for commercial and industrial customers. The CPUC is additionally reviewing an application from SDG&E for a commercial EV dynamic rate. That proposal was consolidated with Application (A.) 21-12-006, SDG&E’s Real-Time Pricing pilot rate Application.

Beyond EV specific rates, much of the work on rates development is taking place through the Rulemaking 22-07-005 focused on advancing demand flexibility through electric rates. One of the key objectives of this rulemaking is the enablement of widespread transportation electrification.

Table 1: Currently available EV rates offered by California IOUs

Submetering

The CPUC issued a decision in August 2022 that adopted a Plug-In Electric Vehicle (PEV) Submetering Protocol. This decision allows any customer to manage the load from EV charging separately from the facility’s load, which has the potential to enable more advanced load management and VGI capabilities. Through the PEV Submetering Protocol, customers can utilize submeters already embedded within their EV charger, saving customers and ratepayers money and laying out the path for advanced load management.

Resale of Electricity

Providers of light-, medium-, and heavy-duty charging services are not regulated as public utilities. The CPUC issued a decision in 2020 that extended a previous CPUC determination that providers of light-duty charging services are not public utilities to providers of medium- and heavy-duty charging services and off-road EV and electric equipment charging services.

IOU Cost and Load Reports

The CPUC decided (D.13-06-014) that the utilities should continue conducting research about the grid impacts of the load associated with EV charging and costs associated with any new transmission infrastructure needed to service the increased EV load. The CPUC required the IOUs to report their TE program costs starting from program year 2019. These are to be included in the load research report that the three large IOUs (PG&E, SCE, and SDG&E) must jointly submit by March 31. Previous reports can be found here:

• Joint IOU Electric Vehicle Load Research and Charging Infrastructure Cost Report (10th Report) March 2022
• Joint IOU Electric Vehicle Load Research and Charging Infrastructure Cost Report (9th Report) Apr 1, 2021
• Joint IOU Electric Vehicle Charing Infrastructure Cost Report (8th Report), Mar 31, 2020
• Joint IOU Electric Vehicle Load Research Report (7th Report), Apr 2, 2019
• Joint IOU Electric Vehicle Load Research Report (6th Report) Dec 29, 2017
• Joint IOU Electric Vehicle Load Research Report (5th Report) Dec 30, 2016
• Joint IOU Electric Vehicle Load Research Report (4th Report) Dec 24, 2015
• Joint IOU Electric Vehicle Load Research Report (3rd Report) Dec 23, 2014
• Joint IOU Electric Vehicle Load Research Report (2nd Report) Jan 31, 2013