EDITOR'S NOTE

Of all the things standing in the way of more charging stations for electric vehicles (and the main thing, of course, is there aren't that many EVs on the road right now), one of the biggest issues is the way utilities do electricity bills. 

The core problem? "Demand charges." Basically, utilities typically charge customers a fee on top of their monthly bill for "the highest amount of energy used in any 15-minute period throughout the month," as one industry source puts it. The point is to make customers contribute to the amount of additional power needed not just to fund average usage throughout the month but also to keep everything going smoothly during times of peak demand. 

But for EV charging stations in particular, this has been a big headache. Many of them operate with very little demand generally, because EVs are still pretty rare. But then when they are used, they are hit with big surcharges. The demand charges might run seven or eight times what the monthly bill would otherwise be--something station operators can hardly afford. 

In fact, Massachusetts just passed a new law this year requiring its utilities to find other ways of billing EV charging stations for power. Dominion Energy in Virginia apparently also offers alternative rate structures for stations with low demand. Same for Eversource in Connecticut, and Southern California Edison. It's hard to see how all providers won't have to make allowances in some way for EV stations here. 

Still, for investors who think betting on EV charging stocks is a sure thing, given the billions likely to pour in from Washington, D.C., this is a critical issue to watch. Shares of Blink Charging, for instance, are down 27% this year. It doesn't matter how much money the Biden administration throws at building out charging infrastructure, if a few months into the experiment, the stations can't make their economics work. 

See you at 1 p.m!

Kelly

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